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All right, well, good morning. Welcome to Red Village Church. Again, if I haven’t met you yet, my name is Rob Fisher. I am serving on the elder team here. And yeah, just a little background on me.
Yeah, we’ve been up here almost nine years now. So we came up nine years ago. We did an internship with Red Village Church with Aaron Joziak. I was kind of evaluating full time vocational ministry at the end of that year. It was pretty clear that was not.
It was gonna be the best path for me. But we just decided to just stay and serve Red Village wherever we could and however we could. And the Lord has kept us here. And so we’re really grateful for the support that the church family here has given us. And yeah, most importantly, I just.
It’s a great privilege and responsibility once again to open God’s Word with you guys. And so we as an elder board and we’d encourage you as a church as well. We’re really thrilled for what ministry is happening at Aaron’s campground. And it’s just an incredible testament to, you know, Aaron talks about the small wins of personal evangelism quite a bit, but really what is happening there. They’re holding services there every holiday weekend with 30, 40, 50, sometimes 70, 80 people there just through personal conversations.
So it’s a really incredible thing. So he is on vacation, but he’s also working and that’s why we’re praying for him today. And that’s how you got me here. You got me here this morning. And if I haven’t, I guess last thing I’ll mention, if I haven’t met you yet, we’re kind of in a season.
We’re getting a lot of new faces here and we’re really, really excited about that. So would love the chance to get to know you a little bit more after service and get you guys kind of plugged into some people who are, you know, a little bit more connected here at Red Village. So as I periodically get the opportunity to preach on these weekends, I usually land on a text to preach on based on some kind of extended meditations on something that I’ve been wrestling with in my own personal life, in my relationship with God. And I just find that the sermon writing process, it just kind of helps me develop a deeper understanding of whatever ideas I’m sorting out. The background on this sermon, however, just kind of goes back to whenever I was first an elder candidate and Aaron suggested that we all meditate on Romans 8, however, memorize it if we could, but just simply spend the summer this Would have been about two years ago meditating on that.
And now in the province of God, there’s a church out of Nashville called Emanuel Nashville. Their worship team put the whole of Romans chapter eight into an album. And the first song covers verses one through four. So this sermon really developed kind of out of. Out of an earworm.
That kind of led to some extended meditations, which led to a lot of pastoral applications in my own life and then also in Red Village. So just a side note, before we get into it, I just want to encourage you guys, just meditate on the Scripture however you can. I think we set this standard that, like, if we’re not memorizing whole chapters of the Bible, that we’re not doing it right. Some people can do that. I can’t.
I have to. This the Scriptures to song works well for me. And so we’re just going to ask that the Lord would be faithful to bring this to fruition. So we’re going to read the text together. We’re going to be In Romans chapter 8, verses 1 through 4 today.
Romans 8:1 4. So I originally wanted to cover verses 1 through 8, but there’s just. There’s so much in this. There’s so much you could potentially unpack in those eight verses that I really feel like I only hit the tip of the iceberg in the first four verses. So with that being said, this is the word of the Lord through Paul, first for the Roman Church, but now for us.
Let’s read Romans 8:1:4.
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. 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 order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who walk not according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit.
Let’s pray for our time, Lord, what a text. What a message. And you know how inadequate I feel to handle this text.
And you know, with so many men that handle and teach youh Word, I think you know how inadequately feel it whenever we just look upon the weight and the glory of the text. And. And so we just ask for your help. Ask that you would use me as a means to advance the gospel, first here within Red Village Church, and then outwards to the city of Madison and to all the ends of the world and help us just to approach this text with a lot of humility, knowing that you remind us in second Timothy that your Scriptures are good for us. They’re useful for teaching us, they challenge us, they correct us, they help to train us in righteousness, and they equip your church.
So we’re thankful for your Bible. Thank you for the opportunity to study it. We’re thankful that it studies us as we study it. And Lord, just use this time that we have to further your kingdom. Amen.
So before we really examine any text, we always want to step back just for a minute and think about the context in which we are seeing these, what we’re studying, the context in which we’re seeing these four verses. So the Book of Romans came about from the Apostle Paul establishing the early church that had this church that had grown in the city of Rome. And the overall main theme from the Book of Romans is just a, it’s a full building out of the Gospel, which is God’s plan for salvation for all people who put their faith in Jesus. So, for example, a progression of selected texts from the Book of Romans is how we have what’s called the Romans Road method of evangelization which was developed. It takes four selected verses out of Romans and lays out man’s need for salvation and God’s provision of Jesus as that means for salvation.
So because the overall main theme of the Book of Romans is the Gospel established and explained in the Book of Romans, we have the largest representation of Paul’s theology on the Gospel of salvation. One of the amazing things to me about the Book of Romans is just the sheer density and the depth of its practical applications as Paul unpacks it. And so just to kind of give you a sense of the depth of the Book of Romans, there was kind of a famous evangelical leader in the mid 20th century, Martyn Lloyd Jones in the United Kingdom, and just an incredible expositor. He preached Sunday mornings, Sunday nights, and he had a Friday night Bible study which is essentially a sermon as well. And kind of in the perfect pairing of a really gifted preacher and an immensely theological rich book of the Bible, Lloyd Jones has 366 recorded teachings, all about an hour long on the Book of Romans.
So just doing some basic math on that number, he spent roughly an hour every Friday night for seven years working through the Book of Romans. So I say that just as a reminder to myself and to all of us that when we interact with the Book of Romans, and especially when we’re trying to do it within about 30 to 35 minutes, this morning, we’re probably going to feel like there’s so much more that we can unpack, and that’s okay. And by the grace of God, we can trust that he will use this limited time to advance the gospel. So let’s just dive into it as we usually do. We’re going to walk through this passage.
We go verse by verse. We kind of study each verse individually. Then at the end, we’re going to look back and just kind of see this whole line of thought that Paul is laying out in these four verses. So back to Romans 1 here. There’s Romans 8, chapter 1, chapter 8, verse 1.
There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
So, at least for me personally, as I read this and has been contemplating this passage for almost two years, first one does so much to set the tone for the rest of the passage. It’s an authoritative, unambiguous, and just arresting phrase, and it packs so much into this short sentence, and it sets the tone, and it’s going to establish the main characters and the driving force for the rest of the text. And when I think about the power that’s encapsulated in this verse, I can still remember the first college writing assignment that I was ever scared of. So I never really struggled with writing assignments in high school. There were certainly other things I did struggle with at an academic level, but I never had to worry about the writing side.
You know, that might be for a combination of things, but maybe some natural giftings to teachers, but it’s probably more of an indictment on the expectations of the public education system in rural Missouri. But transferring now to sophomore year of college, the stakes are higher, the expectations are higher. And I can remember this is a New Testament survey class. We were given the grading guidelines for our first writing assignment. And at the top of this handout, it’s in all caps, it says, clear, concise, cogent.
And the professor, he took about 10 minutes after that just to explain that the standard for good writing is not found in sheer volume and fillers, but more so in stating and explaining and supporting your thesis as clearly as possible, with as few words as possible, and in a matter that is as logical and convincing as possible. That memory is still so clear in my mind, and it haunts me and challenges me to this day.
So as I.
As I look at verse one here, I keep thinking clear, concise, cogent. They pack so much into verse one. There’s so much that is said. It is so powerful in such a short sentence. So that’s the first thing to note, let’s look a little bit more deeply at verse one.
First of all, verse one is going to establish that there, there is a judgment of condemnation due for all people. And second of all, it’s going to establish that all people are defined by where they stand in regard to that condemnation, by how they stand in relation to Christ Jesus. So again, all people are going to be defined by two things that’s laid out in this first verse. First of all, all people are worthy and deserving of condemnation. And secondly, all people can be defined by whether or not they have to bear that condemnation by where they stand in regards to Jesus.
So let’s explore that idea of condemnation a little bit more and we’ll kind of unpack where it came from and what it means. So I referenced earlier the Romans Road as it’s kind of known in modern evangelical lingo, and we’re going to use some of those passages from the Romans Road to establish why there is this judgment of condemnation on people. Romans 3:23 says a lot of you know this, I’m sure all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. And the Bible shows us that all of humanity is stained and judged by sin because God created the world perfect and without sin. And then sin entered the world by our first parents trying to be like God, trying to have the knowledge of God, thinking themselves knowing better than God.
And since then, all of humanity has not been able to say that we are without sin. There’s not been a person without sin. And though we try, we never measure up to the standard of God’s glory and goodness because we have all sinned and fall short of the glory of God, as Romans 3:23 says. So know this. Just a little side note, a full and a correct view of God and the Gospel.
We have to talk about sin. We don’t have to talk about it all the time. We don’t have to dwell on it unnecessarily, but we can avoid it. And when we as a church or as a individual believer, we start to downplay our propensity and our ability and our contribution to sin, then we begin to erode the foundations of the gospel. So in order for there to be the good news of the gospel, there has to be the bad news of sin.
So don’t be afraid to talk about sin. And then the second stop on the Romans road is the first part of Romans 6:23. It states, for the wages of sin is death. And then this, this kind of fills in the whole picture of our condemnation. Because God is a just God and a fair God.
There has to be a fair and a just punishment for the sin of every human. And a fair and a just punishment for the sin of every human is death. And that is the problem that every human has to confront. But for those who are in Christ Jesus, we are not defined by that condemnation. Which brings up the second takeaway from verse one.
If all people are deserving of condemnation, there is another group of those people who are in Christ are freed from the consequences of that condemnation through Christ Jesus. Move on to verse two.
So I was sorting through and I was wrestling through this text. I kept coming back to the second verse as it just adds on. It’s kind of the subtitle to verse one. So verse one can stand on its own merits just fine. But verse two further builds at the idea of verse one.
It says, for the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. Now, Paul’s going to use the term law in a couple different ways in these four verses in this specific passage. But when he’s using the word law here in verse two, he’s using in a way that you could exchange law for pro principle. Okay?
So verse two is here to further emphasize that outside of Jesus, we’re condemned and we’re bound by sin and death. And by the repetition of this idea from verse one into verse two, we see that that line of division gets further drawn between those with Christ and those without Christ. Again, all people are deserving of condemnation. But until you’re freed from that condemnation by the power and the work of Christ on your behalf, until that point, you’re most ultimately defined by sin and death. But for those who are in Christ Jesus, we’re freed from the burden and the consequences and the condemnation deserved by our humanity.
And we’re freed from the sin and sin of sin and death. And we’re given the opportunity to live. We’ll keep going on through the text here. Let’s read verses 3 and 4. Romans 8:3 4 says this.
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 order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who walk not according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit.
So the main idea here is what the law cannot do. So this is a different. Again, we said before there’s kind of two ways Paul’s going to use the word law here.
So the law in this setting is, you know, we think about this in the, in the context of the entire Bible. And then we think about Paul and his audience. Paul, who is distinctly Jewish, he knew the Jewish law. And then also there’s a distinctly Jewish contingent within the Roman Church. We can confidently say that when Paul is using the word law, he was referring to the Old Testament Mosaic Law, most notably embodied in the Ten Commandments.
We find this in Exodus 20. And for the sake of time, I’m not going to read through all the Ten Commandments, but I do want to touch base on a few of them here as a means to remind us that even if we can somehow control all of our external actions, we can follow the Ten Commandments perfectly. We cannot perfectly follow the Ten Commandments whenever we are honest with the desires of our sinful hearts. Okay, Take for example the commandment not to covet. Exodus 20:17 says this.
It says, you shall not covet anything that is your neighbors. Anyone take a stab at claiming they have never had a single moment of envy. And then the commandment on adultery, it’s pretty straightforward. It says, you shall not commit adultery. And I would argue that most, maybe some would argue back.
Most of the general Christian population can hold to this principle in the physical sense, because the physical act of adultery is a massive leap. But Jesus, when talking to the Pharisees in Matthew 5:27, says, Whoever looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart. So I will confidently say there is not a husband in here that will claim that he has never given so much as a passing glance at someone who is not his wife. And then much less forget about married men. Most every man, boy, young man, will fall short of this standard by the time they turn 13.
And I’ve been a 12 year old boy, I know how this goes. So, and then the last one here, the first commandment, in my own assessment of the Ten Commandments, this is the commandment that underlies the motivation for any breach of the other commandments. Exodus 23 says, you’ll have no other gods before me. And every time we go against what God tells us is best for us, we elevate our own judgment to be better than God’s. And in that moment, we put our own judgment ahead of God’s.
We make ourselves the God of that moment, violating the first commandment. So all that to say, all that the law can do, the law in the sense of the Old Testament, Mosaic Law, that God lays out, he says, this is what is best for you. You need to trust me in this. But all that can do is highlight that we can never measure up to those standards. So Paul has written about this more in Romans 7.
So let’s look at this here. Romans 7, 7, 8 says this. What then shall we say? That the law is sin? By no means.
Yet if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin, for I would not have known what is to covet if the law had not said, you shall not covet but sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment produced in me all kinds of covetousness. For apart from the law, sin lies dead.
So what the law cannot do. Let’s tie this up. So what it is, what was it that the law could and could not do? All that the law could and is still limited to do is simply point out that at no point could we on our own, and at no point in the future will we ever be able to do anything about the problem that the law is creating for us, which is like the worst way for a problem to be presented. But as we continue on, there is good news Here in verses 3 and 4, it shows us that what God has done on our behalf, it remedies the problem that the law lays out.
So we see that God sent his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, not as sinful flesh, but in its likeness to be the righteous requirement of the law behalf of those who are in Christ Jesus. So we’re going to unpack a few things here in these verses.
First off, the likeness of sinful flesh. So God came to earth through the man Jesus Christ. And because Jesus Christ was fully man, he bore the likeness of sinful flesh, but only the likeness of sinful flesh. Because Jesus was was fully God, he was also without sin. So we have Jesus Christ, fully God and fully man.
Because he was fully man. He knew what it was to be like. The sin stained mankind. He knew what it was to be tempted. But he never gave in to them.
He never gave in to the temptation because of his status as being fully God. So Jesus, being fully man and fully God, made him the only person who could fulfill the righteous requirements of the law, who could meet the standards. So without Jesus being fully man, he could not represent. He could not represent humanity. But without him being fully God and therefore sinless, he also could not fulfill the righteous requirement of the law, because his sin nature would have disqualified him.
So when we look back at verse one of the text, Jesus Christ Fully man, fully God becoming. The righteous requirement of the law is how we can have the confidence to say there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Jesus Christ.
Okay, moving on in the text here. Everything so far in the text has been about the entities and the people and the acts of God that influence us, and the acts of the devil as well that are at battle are waging war. But now at the end of the passage, we finally get to learn about what we should be in response, how we should respond, and specifically we see how the lives of those of us who are no longer condemned are to be lived. We should be walking, it says, not according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. And when we are walking by the flesh, we are relying on our own means to fulfill the law, which we can never do.
But when we’re walking by the Spirit, which was referenced back in verse two, meaning the Holy Spirit, we are setting our minds on the things of the Spirit, as it states in Romans 8, 5. So to set our mind on the things of the Spirit implies that we have first submitted ourselves to being in Christ Jesus.
Now we don’t have the time today to really fully unpack that a whole lot more what it means to walk according to the Spirit. Maybe that’ll be my next, my next sermon, Lord willing. So we’re going to have to save that for another time. But let’s think back though, to Paul’s purpose in writing this letter, which was simply to explain the gospel as thoroughly as possible.
And that begs the question, why do churches need the gospel explained to them again and again and again and again? In order for the church to be established, the gospel had to be explained at least once. And in order for this, the conversion of souls, the gospel had to be explained then as well.
So now to us in Madison, Wisconsin, Red Village Church, for those of us who have known the power of Christ as our righteous requirement, why do we need these constant refreshers on the gospel? And that is because even though we are free from condemnation, we’re no longer held by the standards of the law. We still have the sinful part of our flesh that tries to appease the law and earn our own righteousness through obeying the law. So I’m going to try to attempt to tie all these thoughts together and give you some practical steps for everyday life here.
I wanted to get more into the idea of how we deal with our own indwelling sin tendencies that will plague us until we die. But again, we just still wrestling through how to articulate that well, and I want to avoid a three hour long sermon here. So let me say this about the law, which is God’s standard for us. Even though we know we will fail, we should never believe that sinning is what God desires for us. So in that sense, we can never also completely disregard the law.
The freedom we find in Jesus from the condemnation of the law, it’s not a license for unrepentant sinning. And even though we know that we will never fully live up to the standard set by God, we cannot stop striving towards them. And the freedom that we find from the condemnation through Jesus, it does not absolve us from, from the need to repent and apologize and ask forgiveness from others.
So we’ll try to keep wrapping this up here. So what is the main point of the text? Again, keep coming back to the main point. The main point is that for all of us here, whether we have known the freedom found in Christ for years, or whether this is your first time hearing it, we have to find our only hope for salvation from that condemnation of our sin through Jesus Christ and only in Jesus Christ. Okay?
That is the main point. The main point is that we are hopeless without Christ. So what does that look like practically for all of us, whether Christians or not? There’s two things I want to leave us with here. First of all, humbly admit to the shortcomings of our sinful flesh and boast only in the work of Jesus Christ on our behalf.
Humbly admit the shortcomings of our flesh, boast only in the work of Christ. We’re going to give a couple examples here, then wrap this up. How do we walk humbly with our own sin? And how do we boast about the work of Christ on our behalf? Now, most of my life, I’ve been fortunate enough to grow up in a Christian home.
Most of my life, I’ve seen it through the lens of being a Christian. And so it’s a little easier for me to start off by addressing the church and seasoned Christians as we think about this posture of humility, about our own efforts towards fulfilling the law. Okay? And in order to think about this, I’m gonna. I’m gonna read we’re gonna recall the parable of the Prodigal Son, which is in Luke 15.
And I don’t remember where it was or who said it, but at some point in the last 10 to 15 years, this parable has really struck me. And I have been able to identify much more with the parable through the ark of the older brother who is not the prodigal son. And so there’s just. There’s the younger brother and there’s the older brother. And each of them need to repent.
So most people remember the prodigal son. It’s a little bit more. He’s a little bit more dramatic, maybe even a little salacious.
So just a little summary. It’s a rags to heavenly riches story. The younger of the two brothers, he’s a complete disaster. He sullies the name of the family. He spoils his inheritance.
And then after this degenerate son confesses his sins and his shortcomings to his father, he returns home. The father is overjoyed and there is much celebration. Now, meanwhile, there’s the older brother, who’s seemingly done no wrong for many years, has faithfully served his father, and he responds quite differently than his father to the news of his brother’s return. So I’m going to read this. We’re going to go to Luke 15:28,32.
All right, just picking up here at the end of the parable, it says this referring to the older brother, but he was angry and refused to go in. His father came out and entreated him, but he answered his father, look, these many years I have served you. I have never disobeyed your command, yet you never gave me a young goat that I might celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours came, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fattened calf for him. And he said to him, son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours.
It is fitting to celebrate and be glad for this. Your brother was dead and is alive. He was lost and he is found.
Now, as we think about the older brother, we have to think about what he thinks should be celebrated, right? Which he reveals this in his dialogue. He says to his father, I served you many years. I never disobeyed. I was there, thick and thin.
And many of us specifically, if we grow up in the church, we have good, healthy Christian families.
This is the sin we cling to. All right? But what the older brother is missing, it’s not his works that count, but it is his status as a son that counts. And specifically here within, you know, these evangelical Reformed circles, we also, we like to think about what is right a lot. Okay?
And that’s okay. Don’t get me wrong. It’s okay. It’s good to be thoughtful. We need biblical critical thinkers who consider the culture, the church, we consider ourselves.
But we only need that so Long as it does not become our chief source of value and our chief treasure of our heart and our justification for our salvation. Because when we start to look at all the accolades that we have accomplished as our means for value instead of Jesus, instead of our status as redeemed through Jesus, then we’re becoming much like the older brother in the parable of the Prodigal Son. And we have to confess that. Okay, one more illustration, then we’ll wrap this up. A few years ago, there was a snippet of a sermon by Alistair Begg.
It went about as viral as you could within evangelical Christianity in this day and age.
Now, in this illustration, Alistair Begg imagines the conversation between the thief on the cross next to Jesus at Calvary and the heavenly gatekeepers. So let me give you the caveat. It’s an extra biblical example. It’s flawed, it’s not perfect. I’ve thought through all these.
I wrestled with it, but it is so effective.
We’re going to read this. We’re still in Luke, Luke 23:39, 43.
One of the criminals who were hanged railed at him, saying, are you not the Christ? Save yourself and us. But the other rebuked him, saying, do you not fear God since you’re under the same sentence of condemnation? And we indeed justly, for we are receiving the due reward of our deeds. But this man has done nothing wrong.
And he said, jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom. And he said to him, truly, I say to you today you will be with me in paradise.
So in the sovereignty of God, sometimes there is so much that isn’t said and so much that is implied by what is not said. So beg. So we don’t know anything about the background of this thief. What we know is that he has ended up on a cross. You know, the chief punishment here.
So beg is imagining a scene as the thief is trying to enter heaven. I’m going to say this as another side note here. I’m not convinced that there’s going to be an interviewing committee after death before we get to heaven. It makes a nice Christian cartoon. It’s kind of a fun idea.
But I’m not convinced about it. But it does. We’re just going to indulge it now for the sake of illustration. So the thief comes up to the angel who is in this case is, you know, presumably holding the Book of Life with the names of those who are in Christ on it. And he’s kind of acting as the gatekeeper of heaven.
And the angel says, well, you know, I don’t see on. I don’t see you here on the list just yet. Can you tell me about your situation? How do you think you got here? And this poor thief, again, all we know about him is in these six verses.
We know nothing else about his background. He goes, well, you know, I think I sorted this thing out right at the end of my earthly life. So, you know, I really can’t speak confidently about all the details about how I got here. The angel says, well, you know, maybe when you were a kid, did you attend to vbs? Did you ever.
Did you pray the sinner’s prayer? The thief says, you know, I don’t know what a VVS stands for. So the angel says, well, what about you? Ever heard of, you know, substitutionary atonement? And the thief says, you know, the substitutionary what?
And then. So then the angel, in this moment of desperation, says, okay, you know what? Just start here and walk backwards and we’ll see if we can piece together what happened. So the thief says, you know, overall, I lived a pretty rotten life, and eventually I landed on the cross, but there was this man next to me on the middle cross. And basically the man on the middle cross said I could come.
So, Church, if you take nothing else away from this morning, take this. The man on the middle cross says, you can come. The man on the middle cross says, you’re no longer condemned by your sin. And the man on the middle cross says, you’re no longer defined by your shortcomings to the law. And the man on the middle cross became the righteous requirement on our behalf that no other man could ever become before a holy and just God.
That’s it. Okay? And in that, there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Jesus Christ. Let’s pray.
Lord, it is such a simple passage, yet such a challenge to our hearts.
We’re grateful for the reminder that no matter our background, there is the man on the middle cross interceding for us as our means of justification.
We pray that your word would not return empty, that your spirit will work through this time as we reflect and consider the claims of this text as we have to wrestle through my shortcomings as a mere man preaching on heavy and weighty things of which I don’t feel qualified. But, Lord, we are grateful that.
There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. It’s in Christ’s name we pray. Amen.