Romans 8:1-17
Key Verse: 8:17

"Now if we are children, then we are heirs--heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory."

 ingIn the previous passage we learned that we are released from the bondage of the law and belonged to Jesus to bear fruit to God. We learned also that we need healthy spiritual struggle with sin to grow in faith through Jesus Christ. Today’s passage reveals that we have spiritual freedom through Jesus and there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. There will be no defeatism due to the indwelling of the Spirit. The Spirit will play a significant role in our spiritual life. The Spirit will dwell us and guide our life. He will give us life to our mortal bodies and make us into children of God. Then we have a privilege to call God our father and become heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ. I pray that God may bless us to live according to the Spirit. May God bless us to set our minds on what the Spirit desires.

Part 1. The Law of the Spirit of Life (1-4)

 Look at verse 1. "Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus." Wow! There is no condemnation for us. This is good news to all Christians. We condemn ourselves a lot when we cannot carry out our desire to do what is good. We seem to struggle with sin endlessly while unbelievers take it easy. Then we are frustrated and fall into self-condemnation due to continuous failure saying, “Oh, I failed again and I am not a good Bible teacher.” Or sometimes unbelievers condemn us by saying, ‘You believe in God but you did not get all A’s. Your life remains same as before. You do not progress at all. What’s wrong with your faith?” But Paul declares confidently that there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Where does his confidence come from? Look at verse 2. “Because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death.” His confidence came from Jesus Christ. The law of the Spirit of life set him free from the law of sin and death. Here the law of the Spirit of life refers to the Holy Spirit that Jesus promised to all believers after his ascension and the law of sin and death refers to Moses’ commandments. The condemnation comes when we violate the commandments. The condemnation comes only from sin. Now we moved from the power of sin to Jesus. As a result, we are free from condemnation. Sin cannot hold us any more under his domain because we are freed from the law of sin and death. Instead the Spirit of Jesus began to guide our life. The Spirit of life empowers all believers to have a condemnation-free spiritual life. After Jesus’ ascension, the Holy Spirit came to the Apostles and they became powerful witnesses of Jesus’ death and resurrection. They did not fall into self-condemnation and did not dwell in their past failures. Apostle Peter did not say, “I am not a good Apostle because I denied Jesus three times.” Instead he preached the gospel of Jesus’ death and resurrection powerfully and one day three thousand people repented and accepted the gospel of Jesus.

Look at verses 3 and 4. “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, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the sinful nature but according to the Spirit.”

Under the Old Testament men tried to solve their sin problem by offering animal sacrifices as a sin offering every year. But their sin problem remained unsolved because they carried the body of sin everyday. But under the New Testament things are different. We no longer live under the power of sin but live under the grace of Jesus. God fulfilled all the requirements of the law in Jesus and did not ask us to do anything but to believe in the work of his Son done on the cross. God knew that we could not free ourselves from the bondage of sin and death and thus he sent his own Son in our likeness to save us from the condemnation of sin and opened us a new way of life led by the Spirit. When Paul said, “God did”, it meant that God condemned Jesus in our place. Jesus became our sin offering. John 3:17 says, “For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.” For example, when the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery to Jesus to condemn her according to the Law of Moses in John 8:1-11, Jesus declared, “Then neither do I condemn you, go now and leave your life of sin.” (John 8:11) If Jesus does not condemn her, who else can condemn her?  Therefore, there is no condemnation for us. The highlight of our Summer Bible conference was the life-testimony night. All speakers shared their past sins. Privacy is a key for success in America. How could they reveal their past sins boldly? They knew that there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.  Their sins are forgiven. We are free from condemnation. From now on the Spirit of Jesus became our guiding principle of life since we came under the grace of Jesus. What a great way God provided for us to begin a new spiritual life! Now no one will condemn us and we should not condemn ourselves. We should have a powerful life of faith filled with the Spirit of praise and love.

Part II. Physical People and Spiritual People (5-11)

There are many kinds of people in this world—short or tall, skinny or fat, rich or poor, smart or dumb. But from the Biblical point of view there are two kinds of people-physical people who live according to the flesh or sinful nature and spiritual people who live according to the Spirit. This is because God created man as both physical and spiritual. (Gen. 2:7) Man has a dual nature. Which one prevails determines man’s destiny. The first kind is physical people. The characteristics of the physical people and some characteristics of the spiritual people are listed in verses 5-8. “Those who live according to their sinful nature have their minds set on what that nature desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on that the Spirit desires. The mind of the sinful man is death, but the mind controlled by the Spirit is life and peace; the sinful mind is hostile to God. It does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so. Those controlled by the sinful nature cannot please God.” When we think about the physical people, who comes in our mind? We may think they are Arnold Schwatzneggar or Mike Tyson. But that’s a wrong idea. The mind not the physical size defines the physical people. People’s action is a mere reflection of their minds. People think first before they act. What we think is the most important in our spiritual life. They think according to their sinful nature. They act according to their sinful desires. They become animal men who live according to their instincts. Where we set our mind shapes our future. When the physical people set their minds on money, they have headaches. When they set their minds on work, they feel tired. But when we set our minds on God’s word, we have peace and joy. The physical people are also hostile to God. If they hear the word “God” or “obedience”, they start to have a severe stomachache and close their ears and shout, “Please leave me alone.” They do not submit to God’s law and are unable to do so because they are dead spiritually. They cannot please God. To physical people troubles and distress always follow, as a shadow follows a tree and as night follows day. What is the outcome of their physical life? It is death. For example, the people of Noah’s time became the physical people. Jesus commented about the people of Noah’s time in Luke 17:26-27, “Just as it was in the days of Noah, so also will it be in the days of the Son of Man. People were eating, drinking, marrying and being given in marriage up to the day Noah entered the ark. Then the flood came and destroyed them all.” People of Noah’s time were thinking about eating, drinking, shopping, watching, and marrying. As a result, they became physical people only. This kind of physical life bore terrible consequences. Genesis 6:3 says, “Then the Lord said, ‘My Spirit will not contend with man forever, for he is mortal; his days will be a hundred and twenty years.’” The final result was a complete destruction by the Flood.

 The second kind is spiritual people. Spiritual people are those who control their minds by the Spirit, which is the Spirit of Jesus. The Spirit of Jesus is the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit comes when we believe in the death and resurrection of Jesus. This is a biblical constant. In whatever they think or do, spiritual men do it in Jesus; they control their thought world completely in the limit of the Bible teachings. Look at verse 6. "The mind of sinful man is death, but the mind controlled by the Spirit is life and peace..." Those who listen to the Spirit and do not fight with men but rather fight against their sins are spiritual men. They honor God’s will over their own human will. They listen to the Spirit of God through their life of prayer. They think about how to please God. They are ready to obey the voice of God. They enjoy the peace of God. They always think about how to serve God and others with the love of God. The outcome of the spiritual life is life and peace. Though M. Allison Haga left to Hong Kong, Shep. Steve has a peace of God like a deep ocean and serves his sheep like his own children diligently. He is filled with the life-giving spirit through the Spirit of Jesus. Yesterday I was happy to see Christine Yun and Maria Kim serving their sheep with peace and joy. They were laughing a lot. That is the fruit of the spiritual people.

Look at verses 10-11. “But if Christ is in you, your body is dead because of sin, yet your spirit is alive because of righteousness. And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit, who lives in you.” Here we see the benefits of the indwelling of the Spirit. The presence of the Holy Spirit changes our life completely. From time to time we wonder whether we are spiritual men or physical men. According to verse 11, we are spiritual men when we believe in the death and resurrection of Jesus. It's because when we believe his death and resurrection, the Holy Spirit works in us and helps us grow spiritually until we can get out of the gravity of sin and plunge into the spiritual world. Moreover, we grow spiritually because our spiritual man, by help of the Holy Spirit, longs for the word of truth and yearns to please God. Our desire changes completely. Through Jesus’ death and resurrection we are now spiritual people and we love to listen to God and serve his will joyfully. What an assurance we have from the indwelling of the Spirit!

Part III. We are God’s Children (12-17)

This part is the highlight of today’s passage. Since we become spiritual people, to whom do we have an obligation? Of course, we don’t have any obligation to the sinful nature. We are out of the sinful nature. Look at verses 13-14. “For if you live according to the sinful nature, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live, because those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God.” The spiritual people has a great privilege to become the sons of God. What kind of privilege will the sons of God have?

Look at verse 15. “For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship. And by him we cry, “Abba, Father.” There is a big difference between a slave and a son. A slave lives in fear of being sold and does not have any inheritance. A son lives in peace and will be an heir of his father. A slave is not a family member though he lives in the house but a son belongs to the family. A son calls his father “Abba, Father.” He asks anything he wants to have from his father without fear of rejection. A son is a son no matter how he messed up his life. No one can separate a son from his father. This is our new relationship with God after we become sons of God. Once we live in fear of God’s wrath because we lived as slaves of sin and as enemies of God. Now we have become the sons of God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Now we can call God “Abba, Father.” This is like children who call their father “Daddy, Daddy, I love you.” There was a family reunion between the North and South Korea on the 15th of August, 2000 after 50 years of separation. One young boy was separated from his father when he was 7 years old and finally met his father and cried with a loud voice, “Abuji, “ which means “Abba, Father.” Then he was separated again. But we Christians come to our heavenly Father anytime and call his name freely. Then he will listen to our cry for help.  Our new relationship enables us to overcome our inner fears. When we believe in Jesus' death and resurrection, the Holy Spirit comes and dwells in our hearts and drives out the spirit of fear who made us most miserable all the time. Jesus said in Luke 11:2, “When you pray, say: ‘Father, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come.’” We have an intimate relationship with God as our loving Father when we believe in Jesus.

 The most remarkable thing is that we can have the assurance that we are the children of God, and that we are heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ. When we have this blessed assurance, nothing can be a problem to us. Look at verses 16,17. "The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God's children. Now if we are children, then we are heirs--heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory." It is incredible that slave people can become heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ. This was a dream to many slaves under the Roman Empire. When Judah Ben Hur, a Roman slave in the movie “Ben Hur” saved a Roman admiral in the sea battle, he was adopted as the son of the Roman admiral. He was elevated to a son’s position and began to enjoy all the privileges immediately. They did not investigate his past records but welcomed him as the privileged Roman citizen. In the same way God did not question about our sinful past but accepted us as his children when we believed in his Son’s death for our sins and his resurrection for our eternal life. Instantly, we began to enjoy all the privileges as sons of God. M. James Park thought that he would enjoy only a portion of heavenly glory when he goes to the heaven. However, when he realized that he is the co-heir with Christ, he was excited by the fact that everything that belongs to Christ also belongs to him as the co-owner. This is the glorious faith that fills us with a glorious hope that cannot be exchanged with anything. People are so ambitious that most people have a vision of world conquest. In history, there have been many innumerable heroes and heroins who attempted world conquest. But most of them turned out to be people who chased rainbows. Human hopes are no more than a chasing after wind. When we believe in Jesus' death and resurrection, we can obtain the kingdom of God. Also, we become heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ. This is our glorious faith. May God bless you to live accord to the Spirit. Let’s read the key verse 17.