Be Led by the Spirit

Romans 8:1-17

Welcome! Today we continue with our series on Romans. Last week, Fred, despite a broken leg, taught us powerfully on Romans 7. In this passage, Paul jumps from third to first person (from “he” to “I”), saying that there are two laws at work in him. The first law is God’s law, and in his mind, Paul says he is a slave to this law, and in his inner being he delights in this law. But the second law is the law of sin, and Paul says that in his sinful nature, in his flesh, he is a slave to this law. This second law wages war against the first law, and Paul calls himself a prisoner of this law of sin. He calls himself wretched – in the Greek, a powerful compound word that literally means pierced with affliction, and asks who will rescue him? Of course, everything Paul describes is not just the situation for Paul; it is also reality for all of us. We all struggle with doing the very things we do not want to do – we all battle ourselves in our struggles to avoid sin. Who will rescue him? Who will rescue us? The answer is God, who delivers us through Jesus Christ our Lord – and how rescue really works is explained in today’s wonderful passage from Romans 8. Let’s get right into this passage:

Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus… - Romans 8:1

Wretched!

Romans 7:14-25

We have been going through the Book of Romans for a number of months now, and we still have a ways to go.  Today we are going to continue in Romans 7:14-25 to get a better understanding of the struggle Paul had between his flesh and his spirit.  The apostle Peter said this about Paul:

Bear in mind that our Lord’s patience means salvation, just as our dear brother Paul also wrote you with the wisdom that God gave him. He writes the same way in all his letters, speaking in them of these matters. His letters contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction. –2 Peter 3:15-16

Released from the Law, but the Law is Good

Romans 7:1-13

Do you feel that Romans is a very theological book? It is indeed full of foundational concepts that define what we believe as Christians. It uses some words that are very important for us to understand: sin, law, grace, faith, righteousness, judgment, and so on. These words are like pegs on which we hang the tapestry of the Christian experience. We need to consider them in the context of the entire Bible to understand what they really mean. And that’s important for us to do, because we can see examples throughout history of where misunderstandings or misconceptions of these key words have led people into all kinds of errors. I will tell you today about how the church got a little off track on the concept of grace and what happened then. But I also want to reiterate the importance of something that goes beyond correct doctrine. We can have our theology all tidily laid out, but that’s not what really matters. The bigger question is what difference it is making in our lives – in how we are truly loving God and truly loving other people. That’s where the rubber hits the road in our understanding of Romans.

Then Shall We Sin? No!

Romans 6:15-23

Welcome! Today we continue with our series on Romans. I want to start by backing up a bit to the end of Chapter 5:

The law was brought in so that the trespass might increase. But where sin increased, grace increased all the more, so that, just as sin reigned in death, so also grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. – Romans 5:20-21

What does it mean that the law was brought in so that the trespass might increase? Did the law really make more things sin than were sin before? I would argue “no” – what it means is that the law made explicit things that people who really had loved God and had really loved other people should have known already.