A cure for AIDS would be a wonderful thing. So would a cure for the struggle against sin. It would be nice to be able to take a pill which would instantly free us from any sort of struggle with sin. To be instantly freed from sin's influence would be a marvelous thing.
Although there are some who would make light of their struggle with sin, those of us who take seriously our walk with Christ are keenly aware of the reality of that struggle. It is real. And sometimes it is overwhelming. For some this struggle is so discouraging that they become depressed and thoroughly frustrated. It becomes very easy for Satan to ride in on these feelings and destroy the self-image of the Christian engaged in the struggle.
You see, we want to please God. When we were born again, God implanted within us a new nature. This new nature desires to live in accordance with God's Word and will. But the old sinful nature, called the flesh, constantly seeks to reassert itself in our lives. What generally results is a sense of exasperation and confusion. What is going on? Why I am struggling? Why can't I seem to get the victory? Why is this happening to me? Have I failed God? Am I missing something? Is there a way to be free?
We know that the great apostle Paul also experienced this struggle, because he describes it in Romans 7:
15 I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. 16 And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. 17 As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. 18 I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. 19 For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. 20 Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it. 21 So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. 22 For in my inner being I delight in God's law; 23 but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members.
Paul struggled with the same conflict you and I experience. It was the struggle of his attempt to live for Jesus. And here he openly shares that struggle with us. By being transparent, he seeks to be an encouragement. By sharing his struggle, he hopes to free us from ours. He had come to the end of his rope. He says in verse 24, “What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?” It is apparent that Paul had come to see his own self-effort for what it was. And it was not enough! Now he will share with us the key to being free at last.
The first thing we need to understand is that sin cannot claim us. Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death. (Romans 8-1:2)
The Bible teaches that, because we are sinners, we are under condemnation. We deserve judgment. But the Bible also teaches that, when we come to Christ, we are forgiven. The guilt of sin is lifted. We are now free.
But knowing we are free, and walking in that freedom is difficult. Our primary difficulty is dealing with the old nature. It is the struggle. The struggle itself causes us to feel condemned.
The word for condemnation in this verse is an interesting one. Not only does it have to do with judgment, it can refer to a piece of land on which there is a prior claim. Sometimes we feel like that. We feel that perhaps the title search was not thorough enough in our lives when we committed ourselves to Jesus. Maybe there is still a lien on our lives.
That is precisely the point to which Paul is speaking. He's saying that sin cannot claim us because Christ has set us free. Jesus Christ has set us free. The law no longer has any jurisdiction. We are free in Jesus Christ; free from the bondage to sin, free from the law of death. We are set free now to live in a dynamic relationship of living union with Christ. We are free in Christ Jesus. But what does it mean to be in Christ?
To be in Christ means that God now sees us united to His Son Jesus. Because of what Jesus did for us on the cross, we are free from sin's dominion and adopted into the family of God. We are now children of God. We are His sons and daughters, with all the rights, prerogatives, and privileges inherent in being in that relationship. In John 1:12 it says, “But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name.”
The truth of what the Scripture is saying is that in Christ we have been set free. That is the truth. It is the truth whether you believe it or not. It is the truth whether you feel it or not. This is the key. God is not calling upon us to act on our feelings, but on the truth of His Word. What we really need is a new self-image; one that is based on the truth of God's Word, not a self-image based on how we feel.
We are personally free in Christ. Sin cannot claim us. We are in Christ, and Jesus Christ has set us free from the law of sin and death. Sin cannot claim us because we are personally free in Christ.
For what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the sinful nature, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in sinful man. (Romans 8:3)
The next thing we need to see is that sin cannot condemn us. We have just read that there is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus. Why? Because Christ condemned the sin, not the sinner. By Christ's work on the cross, he judged sin. He paid the penalty for sin. He released us from the condemnation of sin, by His death. Jesus did what we could not do. It says here, “For what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the sinful nature, God did.”
The Law was designed to draw us into a place of righteous living before a holy God. The Law was not weak, the flesh was weak. The Law was weak only insofar as we could not keep the Law. The Law as a standard of righteousness was a failure because we were failures. What we could not do, which was live according to the righteous commandment of God's Law, God did for us in sending Jesus Christ, who Himself lived that righteous commandment to perfection.
He was sent in the likeness of sinful flesh, and as an offering for sin. He came as a man to live victoriously over all the bondage of sin. He was sinless. But He not only came to live a sinless life, He came to die a sacrificial death. You see, the sinless life of Christ is not enough. He had to go to the Cross so that we could enter into His life. Without the sacrificial death of Christ on the Cross, sin would not be condemned, we would be condemned. The condemnation for sinful lives would then have to fall upon the lives of those who live them.
What Jesus Christ did when He went to the Cross could be called the greatest transaction in history. There He made a complete payment for our sin. Jesus Christ took our sin on Him on the Cross. The things you have done wrong, the things you are ashamed of, the things you have struggled over, the things you have been guilty over, Jesus bore on the Cross. Sins of actions, sins of attitudes, our willful rebellion against God, our wrong relationships with one another; Jesus bore all of them on the Cross. Through His death, He paid the penalty for our sin. He was judged instead of us. And so, because He was judged for our sins, we can now go free.
That is tremendous! Not only did Jesus bear every sin we have ever committed, but Jesus bore every sin we shall ever commit. Now that does not give us a license to sin, but it means that when Jesus died on the Cross, the sins of humanity were judged there. All sins, past, present, and future, have been judged. The penalty has been paid. And we enter into that freedom as we begin to understand it and walk in it by the Spirit.
Now we still struggle with sin. Romans 7 tell us that plainly. We still fight, and far too many times, we lose. We do not want to lose, but we lose. Sometimes we attempt to live victoriously and fail miserably in spite of our good intentions. But the sure Word of God to us is that there is now no condemnation. Sin cannot condemn us. We struggle, but there is no condemnation, even when we sin. Now that does not mean there is no conviction, but there is a vast difference between conviction and condemnation. God convicts us. He tells us that we need to get right with Him, but He does not condemn us. When you sin and go to God, there is no condemnation, no rejection. When we humbly come to Christ, confessing our sin, willing to change our ways, He forgives us for all of our sins and cleanses us from all of our unrighteousness (1 John 1:9).
Neither is God angry at us when we sin, because we are still becoming what God wants us to be. When your son or daughter was beginning to walk, and they took a step, you were thrilled. They were learning. Soon, one step became two, two steps became four, and four became 10,000! But as they were learning, they fell. And when they fell, you did not scold them because they did not walk as well as you. You picked them up, set them upright again, and encouraged them. You dusted them off, told them it was all right, and said, “Come on, you can do it!”
God does not get angry with us when we fall. We are still learning. None of us has arrived. God loves us. There is no rejection, because God's love is not based on our performance. We must see that.
I read something recently from a Jesuit priest which is a powerful statement of God's love. Let me share it with you.
“The only way to survive is to know that God loves me as I am and not as I should be, that He loves me beyond worthiness and unworthiness, beyond fidelity and infidelity; that He loves me in the morning sun and in the evening rain, without caution, regret, boundary, limit, or breaking point; that no matter what I do, He can't stop loving me. When I am really in conscious communion with the reality of wild, passionate, relentless, stubborn, pursuing, tender love of Christ for me, then it's not that I have to, or I've got to, or I must, or I should, or I ought: suddenly I want to change because I know how deeply I' m loved.
I have a good little friend, a 55 year-old nun name Mary Michael O'Shaughnessy, who has a doctorate in theology. She has a banner on her wall that says, “Today I will not should on myself”. One of the wonderful results of my consciousness of God's staggering love for me as I am, is a freedom not to be who I should be or who others want me to be. I can be who I really am. And who I am is a bundle of paradoxes and contradictions: I believe and I doubt, I trust and I get discouraged, I love and I hate, I feel bad about feeling good, I feel guilty if I don't feel guilty. Aristotle said we are rational animals. I say I am an angel with an incredible capacity for beer. It is the real me that God loves. I don't have to be anyone else. For twenty years I tried to be Brother Teresa. I tried to be Francis of Assisi. I had to be a carbon copy of a great saint rather than the original God intended me to be. A black evangelical preacher from Georgia once said, “Be who you is, because if you ain't who you is, you is who you ain't”.
The biggest mistake I can make is to say to God, `Lord, if I change, you will love me, won't you?' The Lord's reply is always, `Wait a minute, you've got it all wrong. You don't have to change so I'll love you; I love you so you'll change.' I simply expose myself to the love that is everything and have an immense, unshakable, reckless, raging confidence that God loves me so much He'll change me and fashion me into the child that He always wanted me to be.”
And so he condemned sin in sinful man, in order that the righteous requirements of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the sinful nature but according to the Spirit. (Romans 8:3c-4)
Finally we need to understand that sin cannot control us. We struggle with sin, but we have the victory. We have the victory because we are in Christ, and also because God is presently at work in us. It is not simply because of something that happened 2,000 years ago on the cross of Calvary that we are able to live in freedom. God is now at work in us. Sin cannot control us because God is at work in us to change us.
What we are becoming is found in Romans 8:29, “For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son.” Part of God's work in us is to conform us to Christ's image. God desires for our character to be like Christ, and that we would live our lives like Jesus lived His. That is what it means to walk, not according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit.
Walking in the Spirit means that we live our lives in utter dependence upon the leadership of God. We see this clearly in the life of Jesus. How did He live?
In John's gospel, we hear Jesus continually emphasizing that He lived by direct dependence on the Father's guidance and power. John 5:19, “Jesus therefore answered and was saying to them, `Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of Himself, unless it is something He sees the Father doing: for whatever the Father does, these things the Son also does in like manner.'” John 8:28, “I do nothing on My own initiative, but I speak these things as the Father taught Me.” These kinds of statements Jesus makes over and over in John's gospel. He lived by His dependence on God's leadership in His life. And so must we. This is what the New Covenant is all about.
The Old Covenant typified by the Law, is man working his way to acceptance with God. We failed miserably at that, and we still do. Yet, that is what so much of the church in our contemporary society is all about. It is performance based. It encourages us to work harder, and to depend on our own strength. But the New Covenant is exactly the opposite. The New Covenant means that everything comes from God, and nothing comes from me. The New Covenant frees us from the tyranny of having to be perfect. It frees us to walk by the leadership of the Spirit.
Walking in the Spirit means we consult with God about our priorities. Walking in the Spirit means that we can give up trying to do it on our own. Walking in the Spirit liberates from the clamoring demands and expectations of others. Walking in the Spirit means our one priority in life is to please God, not by being perfect, but by being His.
By Christ's death on the Cross He has freed us to be His.
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