Sermon For July 12

I don’t have a joke for you this week, nor do I have a special rant as a few weeks ago. What I do have is a warning for all of us today. The warning is that most of us are breaking the law right, and we don’t even know it. Now in the United States, ignorance is not an excuse for breaking the law, so I am going to help all of you to become better, more law abiding citizens. Let me ask a question first. Are any of the men carrying a fire arm today? No, well then I must inform you that you are in fact in violation of Massachusetts state law that a rifle must be carried to church on Sundays. Goatees are also illegal unless you first applied for a permit and paid a special license fee for the privilege of wearing one, and snoring is illegal unless all bedroom windows are firmly closed and locked. Now that you are not ignorant anymore, I hope you will make the necessary changes to your behavior to begin to obey the laws of this fine Commonwealth. Why on earth would I tell you all of this, well it sort of relates to today’s text.

Turn with me to your programs. We read in Romans 7:

5For while we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death. 6But now we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive, so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code.

7What 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 it is to covet if the law had not said, "You shall not covet." 8But sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness. For apart from the law, sin lies dead. 9I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin came alive and I died. 10The very commandment that promised life proved to be death to me. 11For sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me. 12So the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good.

Paul is continuing his thoughts from the previous chapter, and it behooves us to revisit his main ideas for a moment. What he says in Romans 6 is that we are not under Law anymore, but under grace. He says we died to our old selves, and were raised with Jesus to live a new life, and this new life is not by the Law, but by the Spirit. But, it almost seems from his argument that it was the law that was the cause of sin. So here he begins to refute that assertion.

Paul clearly states in verse 5 that while we were living in the flesh, in that old life, our sinful passions were aroused by the Law, and I think we need to look at this closely before we move on. It would seem by this statement that the law does in fact cause sin, but not 2 verses later we read that the law is not sin. How can this be the case? Let me ask the guys a question- do any of you now want to grow a goatee simply because I told you it was illegal to do so? Some of you do, I am sure. How many of you are familiar with the internet? Most of us. Well have you ever been forwarded, or found on your own something called the “Don’t Push the Red Button Game”. You can find it a variety of places. All the game is, is a red button that says “Don’t push” on it. If you push it, the saying changes to “Really don’t push it”, “I am serious, don’t push it”, “Are you listening”, etc. It goes on like this for hours. Now I submit that to win, all you need to do it not push the button, but everyone pushes it. Most simply because it tells us not to. See, our sinful passions were aroused by a law. Now it is not evil of the game to say don’t push the button, it is simply the rule to win said game. We though, having our passions peaked, push it.

I want to give one more example, but since I really like following rules, I have to use my wife for this. Some of you may not know it, but my wife is the rebel of the family. Really. If you tell her not to do something, she usually want to do it to spite you, and if you tell her to do something, she doesn’t want to do it, even if she was going to do it already. Let me tell you how this plays out in her life. By the way I am not gossiping since she is in the room, I am poking fun- it is completely different.

As most of you just experienced, it is commonplace in MERCYhouse to stand while we sing worship songs. While it is common, it is not the rule. Typically after the sermon, and especially after communion, people don’t stand unless they are told to by the worship band. This is quite a social phenomenon worthy of study, but that is not what we are concerned with at present. See, my wife does like to stand right after the sermon, and especially after communion. She is usually praying and gearing up to stand, when the worship leader will say something like, “Would you all stand,” or “Let stand for the last song,” and something in Sarah snaps. She was on her way to stand of her own free will, and after hearing these words sits down defiantly. She sure showed that worship leader, she is not going to stand simply because they said so. The best part of it all is that she actually wanted to stand, and may have been upset that others weren’t standing, but once it becomes a command, well that is an affront to her, her liberty, and her God, and so she sits. Now I know that you all will be watching her later, so really guilt her into standing, even if we are told to.

What has changed in the seconds that she wanted to stand, and then didn’t? She was simply told she should stand. She was given a rule, a law, if you will, and it aroused her passions. I want us to notice something though, she is not actually trying to actively be defiant. She does not premeditate this. In fact, being a woman who is seeking after God, she is actively trying to stop this reaction. She recognizes it for what it is, sinful, and tries to stop it. The verbs Paul uses here are also passive. They reflect much more the passions over taking us, being aroused almost, dare I say, against our will, rather than we fanning the flames. The law is used by our sinful nature in very much the same way as the stupid internet game, or my wives defiance.

And Paul attributes this to our flesh. The reason we want to push the button is because we were told not to, and for no other reason. I know we can all relate to this. In Confessions, Augustine talks about how, as a youth he stole fruit from a local vendor, not because he wanted the fruit, (he actually ended up feeding it to animals) but because he was told not to. This is our flesh. It is defiant and crooked. This is why chapter 6 is so important. It reminds us that we have died to the flesh. We are no longer under law.

Paul writes we can serve under the Spirit. But it still seems like the Law could be called evil, especially when viewed through the lens of laws today. In my introduction I told us about a few crazy laws in Massachusetts. There are actually worse one other places, like Florida, par example, where it is actually illegal to give a donkey a bath in your tub. What you do when your pet donkey gets dirty, I don’t know, but you don’t give it a bath, that’s for sure, unless you’re a felon. But the objection can easily be raised that it is only illegal to do this because it was written down, and if the law was never put on the books, everyone who loves their Donkey and gives it a bath would not be a felon, but rather a great owner. It seems then, that the Law is what produced the crime. And this is a reasonable objection for US laws. Things are not illegal until we make them so. In the early 1920’s my grandfather started what would become an illustrious career. He was 12 at the time, and was driving a delivery truck all around Boston. And he did it all legally. He was a law abiding citizen. This was possible because there was no law in 1920 demanding that one must be over 16 year old and licensed by the state to drive. You could just hop in and go, assuming you knew how to operate a stick shift. Today that is not the case, but no one would say my grandfather should have been arrested for driving so young. It became illegal to drive at 12 after they made the law.

What should we say then, is the law sin? Does this Law of the Old Testament operate under the same system as the laws in this country, or any, for that matter? Well Paul tells us by no means! The law is not sin. But Paul does concede that if it were not for the Law we would not know sin. If it is only by the law that we know sin, how does the law not produce the sin? That is a very subtle metaphysical question, and it has equally as subtle an answer. This is where the previous chapters of Romans come in real handy. We may remember a few weeks ago I gave a brief synopsis of those chapters. One of the strands of thought that Paul follows is that both Jews, who have the Law, and gentiles, who don’t, are guilty and condemned before God.

The Jews stood condemned because of the Law, and the Gentiles because of their conscience, for they know what is right and wrong, but don’t follow it. See, it may not have been illegal to murder someone before that became a law, but it was certainly wrong. In this case the law was there before the written code. Cain is punished for murdering his brother even before the Law was given. Now what the Law does is call wrong doing something different, it calls it sin. Wrong was wrong before the Law was given, but under the Law, wrong also becomes sin. The Law lets us know what Gods standard are, and how we have failed. This is evident in Paul’s example. Paul chooses to prove his point using the tenth commandment. Now this commandment only deals with the condition of the heart. While the others certainly deal with conditions of the heart as well, they also have outward actions. The command not to covet has no immediate outward actions associated with it. It is only an internal desire. And Paul says he wouldn’t have known what coveting was had he not been told. Once the command was given though, something happened. Sin now had an opportunity to strike. When Cindy or Scott or Ethan or Eric tells us to stand, it is a good thing. We are brought together in our worship and reminded of our relation to God, but with this command comes an opportunity for sin. We can become defiant and rebellious and not want to stand out of spite.

In the same way the command to not covet can produce covetousness. But it is not the commandment that is sinful, but rather sin. And sin uses what ever it can. By having the Law, we have even more ways to be rebellious, and since we are of the flesh, we rebel. We rebel against laws, authority, God, and so the flesh produces in us all manner of sin.

And then Paul takes a brief digression. He says:

9I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin came alive and I died. 10The very commandment that promised life proved to be death to me. 11For sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me.

After reading some commentaries and meditating on these verses I have come to the following conclusion about these verses. What Paul is doing is giving us a personal glimpse into the moment he knew his own fallenness. Remember that Paul lived in Israel and was a Pharisee, so it is hard to imagine a time in his life that he was without the law. However, I can imagine Paul going through the same transition in life that so many others have gone through. How many of us have grown up with the Law? We are raised to believe in right and wrong, etc. And most of us for a while thought ourselves, at the very least, decent people. I would imagine most people consider themselves, “good”, and polls back me up. But something happened to most of us in this room. We were confronted with Gods standard and we were ashamed. At some point in our life we knew that we were not in fact good people, but hopelessly broken and sinful. Our sin came alive, so to speak. We finally saw it for what it was, it became known, and at his very moment we died. We knew we could not measure up, that we were condemned, and rightly so. This is what I believe Paul is communicating here. These commandments that promised life, when he really got it, understood it in his heart, actually proved death because he realized he had not kept a single one.

So then Paul concludes that the commandment is holy. It is not like these other human laws. It is good, it is we who were evil, and as such turned a positive in to a negative. But does that mean this good law brought death? Paul states it like this

13Did that which is good, then, bring death to me? By no means! It was sin, producing death in me through what is good, in order that sin might be shown to be sin, and through the commandment might become sinful beyond measure. 14For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold under sin.

And Paul again answers his rhetorical question with, “By no means!” It was sin that produced the death, not the commandment. It was through the commandment that we knew we had died, but this is no fault of the commandment, it is the fault of sin. What the commandment does is call sin, sin. It reminds us that it isn’t our personal ideas of what right and wrong are, but that there is a standard we are called to live up to. When our conscience condemned us, the commandment tell us why. It is because there is sin. There is a standard. So then sin kills us, and the commandment simply brings this to life.

And then Paul throws this line in:

14For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold under sin.

And with this he is going to change his train of thought slightly. We have been in this theological realm once again with Paul. He is asking and answering rhetorical questions in an attempt to build an argument. He has been talking about the Law in this kind of Platonic Idea sense, and he has been doing all this to answer objections to his earlier arguments. Remember that there are Jewish converts who are concerned about the Law, and gentiles who want to throw the baby out with the bath water. In the entirely of this last section he has been trying to marry the idea of the Law with this new revelation of life by the Spirit. He is reminding us that the Law is both good but not sufficient. We are not to live by it anymore, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have a purpose. It brought death, but that doesn’t mean it is evil. He is trying to answer objections from both sides, and he ends with this: That the law is spiritual but he is of the flesh, sold under sin, and presumably, not just him, but all of us. The Law then is good, but he is not, is the conclusion.

He continues in this vein, but we need to have Romans the larger book in the back of our minds as we read this next section. He is here going to join this latest diatribe with what has just been said in chapter 6. And what exactly was that? If we remember, Paul writes in those chapters that we are dead to sin, and as such can offer our bodies to God as instruments of righteousness. He tells us to not let sin reign in our mortal bodies, but rather be free of sin and slaves to God. Now with these commands in mind, as well as Paul’s confession that he is not spiritual, but of the flesh, Paul writes the following:

15For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. 16Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good. 17So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. 18For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. 19 For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. 20Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me.

He says that he can’t do what he wants to do. More than this, he can’t even understand himself. He does what he hates, and can’t do what he wants. Let me pick on my wife a little more. If you ask her about her contempt for forced standing, she will tell you she knows it is ridiculous. More than this, she will tell you that she knows it is wrong. But she can’t help it. She tells herself to not feel this way, but it comes anyway. If you tried to convince her that her feelings are wrong (which guys I don’t ever recommend telling a woman), she would agree with you. So she then agrees with the law.

To use Paul’s example of coveting, we can see this even more clearly. We know coveting is wrong because we have been told, but how many of us covet. I know I do almost all the time. I covet others cars and houses and shirts. And I also know it is wrong. I know I shouldn‘t be doing this, but sometimes it seems like the harder I try not to, the more I covet. I see the consequences of coveting: not being content with what God has given me, trying to think of ways to get what others have by less that admiral means, getting cranky at my wife when I can’t buy what I want when I want. So I agree with the Law, that it is good. Coveting produces bad behaviors and shouldn’t be done, but I can’t follow the commandment.

Now Paul says that if I agree with the law, but don’t keep it, it can’t be me any more. Who ever heard of a person not doing what they want? If I want to walk over here I do it, if I want to go over there, I do it. If I wanted to go over there at this moment and couldn’t, but in fact went over here instead, then it must not be me or my will moving me. The best example I have of this is in the arena of sports. There are a few sports I have played, football and wrestling, mainly, where I was not always in charge or my own actions. During one wrestling match I desperately wanted to move my arm under the guy I was wrestling. He was pinning me, and my intent was to flip him. He, however, was stronger and more skilled than I, and as such moved my arm to where he wanted it to go. As he did this, I was caught in a move called a double chicken wing, which is painful and humiliating. I didn’t want to be in this position, in fact, my entire will was against it, but I was there anyway. I don’t believe anyone on my team thought, “That was stupid of Nate, he should have never chosen to be there.” They knew it was not my will. And so it wasn’t my will, but the other guys.

In the same way, many times while playing football I have had others will imposed upon me. I have been tackled or blocked, and I assure you I did not choose this. Therefore we know it wasn't me, but someone else’s will that threw me to the ground. This is Paul’s argument as well, albeit at a much higher level.

He tries to do good, but fails. He tries to not do evil, but does it. So it is not him anymore. He finishes this thought, repeating what he just said.

For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. 19 For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. 20Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me.

And I don’t think this was meant to give us an insight into only Paul’s struggles. This text applies to all of us, does it not? I know myself and my wife have uttered these very words many times. I don’t do what I want to. I know what I should do, but I just can’t do it. I know that what I am doing is wrong, but I just can’t stop. Does this sound familiar to anyone else?

This is the human condition, is it not? Both for Christians and non-Christians. One of the ways I know this, is that it is a common theme in movies and literature throughout the ages. How many of you have seen The Incredible Hulk - not the old movie that was terrible, but the good one that is out right now? What is Bruce Banners problem? He has a monster in him he can’t control- at least not in the beginning. He tries all sorts of methods to keep the monster locked within, finding some success with breathing techniques, until circumstances out of his control release the inner beast once again. This resonates with us. It has resonated with us for decades. And why, because people understand this inner monster that they can’t control. They get that occasionally, against their entire will a beast comes out. No matter how hard they try, or what they do, eventually a creature that is part of us, that lives in our inner most being, comes to the surface and takes control of us.

And don’t think this story is new to the post 1970 comic book world. It is far older than that. If we were to look at a list of must read literature of the English language, chances are that a book by Robert Louis Stevenson would be on that list. The book? The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. I am not here going to give a summary of the entire book, but rather a quick over view and summary of the end. First there is Dr. Jekyll. He believes that there is both a good side and dark side inside himself. He sets about to separate the two, and after drinking many potions finds one that works. He transforms into Mr. Hyde, an evil, vile, monster devoid of morality. For a while he turns only when he drinks the potion, but soon he is transforming in his sleep involuntarily. He resolves to not change anymore, and get the monster under control- and for a while he is successful. Until a fateful night when the urge to become Mr. Hyde becomes to strong and he changes into the beast once again, who then roams the streets and kills Sir Danvers Carew. The grief from this event over takes Dr. Jekyll and he is even more resolved to never become Mr. Hyde again. And all seems well until, with no prodding, and completely alert he turns into Mr. Hyde for the very first time. This becomes the norm, Mr. Hyde now being in control more that Dr Jekyll, who now needs potions to remain himself. Does this sound familiar to anyone in the room? And I don’t mean have you read the book.

This plot of an inner monster that is uncontrollable is the human experience. We all cry out with Paul that what we want to do we don’t do, and hat we don’t want to do we continue to do. And all this from a man who told us not 3 paragraphs earlier to put to death the body, not be a slave to sin, stop obeying its lust and commands, and instead offer our bodies as instruments for righteousness. He concludes this thought as follows:

21So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. 22For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, 23but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members.

There, it would seem, are two persons- a real Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. He delights in the law of God, but can’t carry it out. He is waging a war against himself. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. What are we to do then? If this is us, we want to please God, but can’t. We see the Law as good, but it gets used for evil. We desire to live a righteous life, but instead find only death and sin. What are we to do? How can we survive if we are waging war against our very selves?

And this is a real problem, is it not? For the past two weeks we have been told to be good. I told us that we are no longer slaves to sin, but to God; that we had the ability to follow God and be righteous. Last week Patrick told us that there are two spirals, one of righteousness leading to life, and the other of sin leading to death. All we have to do is follow the spiral of righteousness. Let me ask, though, how many of us tried to follow this spiral? How many of us tried to put ourselves to death and unite with Christ in his death so we could be united with him in his resurrection? How many of us failed, and failed miserably? I know I did. What are we to do then? Paul cries out with this question too. He finishes the chapter saying:

24Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? 25Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.

Who will deliver me? What am I to do? Wretched man that I am! He sees this death all around him, and also sees that he can not do anything about it. He can not even control his own will, how then can he live. And his answer?

Thanks be to God, through Jesus Christ our Lord! Thanks be to God. Again, go back to all the previous chapters of Romans. The theme isn’t what we have to do, but what God has already done. The death He died he died once for all. We get to unite with him in this through faith, but that is all. We need not do anything else. Yes, sin through the Law brought death, but God brought life. And we are not part of this world anymore. We have died to all that, if we unite with Christ. And more than this, we don’t only die, but are given new life. We are given new life. Who will deliver us from our bodies of death? Jesus.

And we only need to faith in him to be delivered. We no longer need to follow the Law, but the Spirit. That is not to say we are not still going to have struggles. Paul clearly does. I know I do. A Hyde still lives in all of us, and it is called many things: sin, the flesh, sin nature, humanity. But it is not who we need bow to anymore. Paul says, “so therefore I myself serve the Law of God”. That other thing, it is not who we are anymore, it is not us. This is our solace. That monster is still there, but where before we were the monster, now we are new creations.

Where before Mr. Hyde was our true self, now he is something altogether other. That is not to say he doesn’t control us now and again, but just as it was not me who pinned myself wrestling, it was my competitor, so too is it not truly us when we are controlled by our flesh, but the sin that lives in us.

And although we don’t read it specifically at this moment, in other places we are assured that the victories of sin over us can and will become less frequent. As we continue to die to our old self, and become renewed perpetually, being guided by the Spirit, we have assurance that an eventual victory has already been won. Paul doesn’t end this section in despair, but rather in praise. Yes he was continually beaten and his will usurped, but God has rescued him anyway. Yes, he was unrighteous and sinful, and at times a monster, but God has set him free in spite of this. Who will rescue me? It is not I, but God. We have been set free from sin and death. We are no longer under Law, but under grace.

This is the conclusion we must come to as well. We are not under law, but grace. If we have been united with Christ in his death, then surely we will be united with him in his resurrection. We don’t need to rescue ourselves, God has already rescued us!

As we hear sermons about holiness and righteousness, the tendency in my experience, is to try to be good in our own power, and if we are honest with ourselves, we realize that we fail. We don’t do what we want, and we do what we don’t want to. What are we to do then? And here, in this chapter is the solution.

We are to morn our inequities. We are broken. We are sinful. We can’t keep the law. It seems like there is a monster inside us who controls us almost all of the time. But we mustn’t end there. We begin at trying to be righteous and move to what a wretched man I am. But that is not where we end. We end with “Praise be to God through Jesus” who has saved us from this prison. We don’t end at despair, but rather at hope.

Sin wants us to end earlier. It wants us to end at death. It wants us to despair. It wants us to forget our Identity. But grace wants us to move past this. We died with Christ and can now live with him. That is where we need to end. We realize that we are in the flesh now; we have opposing natures, but the old self, the sin nature is not who we are anymore. We must never forget this. We can serve God with our mind, even while our old selves try to rebel. We can be united with Christ in his resurrection. We can be guided by the Spirit.

This is the application for today. Know who you are. You are not that monster anymore. God has saved you. Rest in this truth- rest in His Truth.

Oh wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord. Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord.

If you are here today, whether a Christian or not, and this describes you, I tell you, you are not unique. If you try to do good, but can’t, or try to stop doing bad, but can’t, I tell you, you are not alone. This is the human condition. There is freedom though. Christ can set you free. That monster that lives inside and tries so hard to control you can be killed. You can claim this new identity that God has for you. He is the one who can save you. If you would unite with him in his death, know that you will also unite with him in his resurrection.

If it feels like you are living in a prison at times, I tell you, you are. We are cursed to live with this flesh that constantly tries to kill us. There is life though. Where sin brings death, Jesus offers us life. I am not saying that there won’t be struggles, that you wont fail at times, but you can take solace in the fact that it is not you anymore. You can be freed from bondage, even while having to stay in this prison.

There is noting you need to do- nothing you can do. What God is offering, he is offering for free. He has already done it all. The death he died, he died once and for all, but the life he lives, he lives to God. We are told we can unite in this with Jesus. We can be given new life. Yes you will fail. Yes there will be inner turmoil and pain, but we need not stop there. Take the next step, and ask God to save you from all of this.

Don’t stop short of what this life can be. Don’t give into the lies and control of the flesh. Cry out with Paul, that yes, we too are wretched. We too can not save ourselves. We too are broke. Who will save us? But don’t end there. Take the next step along with Paul. Who will save us from this body of death? Thanks be to God, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Join with Paul in thanksgiving and praise. Take this next step and cast off the despair on hopes of something more. Who will save us- God himself.

In a few moments we will be taking communion. We do this as a way to unite in both Jesus death and resurrection. I encourage you to use this time to cry out to God. Cry out with Paul. Confess that you do what you don’t want to, and what you want to you don’t do. Tell him about your monsters, about your Hydes. Ask him to save you from this body of death. Ask him for this new life he has promised.

On the Night he was betrayed, Jesus took bread and he broke it, and said,” This is my Body, broken for you, do this in remembrance of me.” In the same way he took the cup and said, “This cup I the new covenant of my blood. Do this as often as you drink in remembrance of me.”

In a few moments I am going to pray and the band is going to come up and lead us in a time of worship. If you are a follower of Christ, I invite you to come to this table and eat and drink. Use this time to commune with the God ho has saved you. If you are not a follower of Jesus, I would encourage you to use this time to think about what you heard, to pray, to seek God.

Let us Pray.

Metaphysical club

So I finally have found time to write, and I will give you a slight taste of what to come. First off, everyone should read the book- The Metaphysical Club. It describes American political life before the Civil war, during, and after to show historically how we got to where we are today. It is spectacular. I have a lot to say about it, but wont be putting things here in this blog, at this moment, though I certainly will be writing about it and historical politics soon. I will be posting more later this week, including this weeks sermon, but right now I want to go finish the book.

Oh, and by the way, Sarah is good, and having contractions. She may pop whenever, so place your bets now.

Last Weeks Sermon

Before I begin this week I want to let all of you in on a little secret that I have. After I tell you, you may not think it that secret after all, but I have to open with something, and this is what I have chosen. So the secret is that I am terribly ambitious. Now, I know that is shocking, but it is true. I am also, what some might call, slightly manic. Often I get grandiose ideas, and want to quit everything and begin the new thing, only to have yet another new thing a week later. Let me give you an example. Some of you know I am an artist. Well whenever I paint, I think, “I should become a full time artist”, and then for about 2 days I paint and draw 4-5 masterpieces, make frames, talk to art galleries about hanging my stuff, and then I forget all about it. And it is not just art. A few weeks ago I joined a book club and we began talking politics, and I used to be a political science major (and I was good at it) so I wrote a position paper, and then decided maybe I should go into politics. And then I remembered that I had a sermon to write, so I stopped thinking I should be a political scientist, and thought, “I should write a book, because I love writing”. But I also like writing sermons, so maybe I should be a pastor. See very manic. The reason I am telling you all of this is I also want to be a comedian every Thursday at about 9pm. Why such a set time, because it is when Last Comic Standing is on, and I watch it. Very often I think, “I am funnier than them, I could be a comic”. I have decided my ideal job would be a stand-up, church-planter, ghost speech writer, who drives public policy by being in a think tank, paints on Saturdays, tutors in Math and Physics in my free time, and writes a book about it all, oh, and maybe someday is President. Why am I telling you all of this? Because I often open with a joke to appease the stand up comedian in me, but couldn’t think of one for the life of me this week.

That brings me to today’s sermon. This week we begin our new series on the book of Romans. We only have 9 weeks until the next series though, and as such will be walking through only a small part of the book. We are going to start in Chapter 6 and will end at Romans 8. “Why so little”, we may think, and the answer is simple enough- the book is dense. It is one of the most theologically packed books of the Bible. It is so packed in fact, John Piper- who some of you may know, he is a pastor in Minneapolis- spent 5 years going through this book alone. Well, Robert didn’t give the summer preaching team 5 years, he gave us 9 weeks, so some compromises had to be made, and as such, we will begin in Chapter 6. This doesn’t mean that the first 5 chapters aren’t important. They are. In fact the chapters we are going to look at don’t make sense without them. So before we jump into chapter 6, we are going to back peddle and summarize the preceding sections.

I spent hours paraphrasing Paul, and quoting certain sections of each chapter to show exactly what he said, and after all that work, I went back and read what I had written and found out it was crap. It wasn’t wrong, per se, it was just boring, and in some places terrible writing. And since I just confessed that I want to be a speech writer in my free time, I can’t afford bad writing. I was also hating my life as I was doing it. It was passionless and sophomoric- and since I have been complaining to some of you about another writer’s style, I felt the weight even more to communicate these first five chapters beautifully and effectively. Instead then, of simply quoting Paul and laying out a straight outline, I will be taking a different approach if you will allow me. What Paul does in the first five chapters of Romans is to lay out the Gospel. And that is what I am going to do. Paul explains grace, and I will do the same.

People are broken. That is where Paul starts, and so it is must be with us as well. They used to be not broken. When God first envisioned Man, he was made in His image and was in perfect communion with God. God created all things, and then set Adam down in the center of it. He gives man a garden, and then a wife so awesome that Adam sings a song (and I imagine does a cheesy dance as well). And everything seems great. And then something cosmic happens. Man chooses to disobey God, and everything changes. Man becomes separated from God, although still in somewhat of a communion with him, but the communion isn’t perfect as it was before. Soon we read of Cain and Able, and the first murder takes place. God, right before this happens, tries to warn Cain not to do it, telling him that sin crouches like a tiger. Cain doesn’t heed the warning, and commits fratricide anyway. Soon all of humanity is so wicked that God almost wipes them all out. But he finds one righteous man, Noah, and so spares him and his family. And you would think that that would solve the problem, but it doesn’t. Noah gets off his boat and gets drunk, and the whole thing starts again.

Noah’s family set off to repopulate the world, and ideally they would bring this knowledge of God with them. Whether they did or not, a few years later everyone is worshipping idols. Paul says that they exchanged the truth of God for a lie and began worshiping creatures and carvings and everything else, besides God himself.

And because of this God gave them up to their passions. He released his hand of Grace, and when he did so, sin spread even faster. They knew God and saw him, but refused to worship, and as such they were given over to their debased minds. All manner of sin exploded. They were filled with unrighteousness and evil. And since the evidence of God as overwhelming, they were without excuse. They knew God, but refused to worship him. And so God washes his hands of them.

God wasn’t completely done however. Again he finds one man, a man called Abram, and calls him to himself. Abram converts, gets a new name, Abraham, and the Jewish people are born. God chooses to bless him, and the world through his offspring, even while sin is running rampant everywhere else. The Jews find them selves slaves soon after, and it appears like they will never get out. But again, God has a plan and raises up for himself a man called Moses who leads Israel to freedom. God creates a covenant with them, saying that if they would be his people, he would be their God, and he brings them to the Promised Land. This is not to say the Jew’s were any better than anyone else. God repeatedly has to call them back to himself, and as the rest of the world’s people, Israel constantly refuses to worship God.

There is a difference though. As God made a covenant with them, he also gives them something called the Law. This was the first 5 books of the Old Testament, and it was the rules that Israel was to live by. When other tribes sinned, it was their conscience that condemned them. We all know that certain actions, like cold blooded murder, are wrong. This testifies to our knowledge of God. Israel had Gods law though, and so it was the Law, and not their conscience that bore witness to their sin. It says in the Law that murder is wrong, and so it becomes another conscience, if you will.

So no one is free from blame. We have all sinned, and stand condemned either by our conscience or by the Law. Why even give the law then? What value is it to have the Old Testament if all it does is condemn us, especially if we stand condemned already? The answer is that the Law didn’t only condemn. It also contains a promise. Before we get to that, let me digress for a minute. The Jews, having received the Law felt they were special, privileged. They understood the Law to be Gods word, as well as his standards for living, and so prided themselves on keeping it. They thought was that one could be righteous is one kept the Law perfectly. And so the Jews set out to make themselves righteous before God. But as I already said, the Law condemned them, for no one could maintain perfect adherence to it, and so they too were as sinful as the Pagans who didn’t have it. So what advantage is it to have the Law? That is where this promise comes in.

The promise was that God would save his people. That a Savior would come and establish God’s kingdom, that at some time in the future, we would be free from unrighteousness, that somehow we would be saved from sin and death. That is the value in the Law. Paul says it like this

Romans 3:21-23

“21But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it— 22the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: 23for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24 and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus”

This is the benefit of the Law. They knew this was coming. They were entrusted with the Scriptures. They were the light to the Nations.

When God chose Abraham, there was no Law, but he was counted as righteous anyway. How then was this possible? It was because he had faith. And God rewarded this faith with a child, and eventually with a nation. We read in the Old Testament that Abraham’s faith was counted to him as righteousness. His righteousness wasn’t in keeping the Law, but rather in his faith, and faith alone. This was the reason for the Law, it was to bring us to faith, not only proscribe how we can make ourselves righteous. The lesson is that righteousness came by faith.

And remember what the Law testifies to- it testifies to the righteousness of God through Jesus Christ. The benefit to having the Law is that we can see Jesus more clearly. And Paul writes all of this in 4 chapters to bring us to the end of chapter 5. Here we hearken back to Adam. He sinned, and so cursed us all. Death rained from Adam to Moses, Paul says. Even the man who gives us the Law and revealed God’s plan to us died. We all died because Adam died and cursed us with death when he sinned.

But Paul goes on; the gift of God is different. Just as all died through Adam, all can be made righteous through Jesus. Just as condemnation came through one man, so does justification. Just as we were separated from God through Adam, so are we reunited through Christ. Just as the trespass of one man lead to death, so does the obedience of one man lead to life.

Paul tells us at the end of Romans 5 that the law came to increase the trespass, but where sin abounded grace abounded even more. He says just as sin reigned in death, grace might also reign on righteousness leading to eternal life.

What Paul is proclaiming in these chapters is the Gospel. If you will allow me, I would like to paraphrase my paraphrase. Human are sinful and broken. We do wrong all the time, and so stand accused and condemned before God. However God promised to save us. Eventually he sends his Son, Jesus, to do what we could not, namely live a sinless life. By faith in Christ we are given the gift of righteousness. This gift was by grace. It was undeserved. It is also greatest in the ones who deserve it least. This is the definition of grace. If we could earn it would not be grace but our due wages. We couldn’t earn it though, and so God did for us what we could not do for ourselves. By faith we were given righteousness and life.

And so, with all of this in mind, we turn to Romans 6. Before we get there, though, let us return briefly to a statement that both Paul and I made. Quoting Paul I said that where sin abounded, grace abounded all the more. How can this be true? Well the more one sins before one is a Christian, the more they are forgiven, and so the more Grace there is. As someone who sinned a lot, I can attest to this. Many of you have heard my story before. I was a drug addict alcoholic who slept around, swore like a sailor, lusted after money and power and fame and women and booze and darkness. Yet here I am preaching. When God washed me clean of all my iniquities he poured out more grace than I can fathom. Where sin abounded grace even more abounded. I am not saying grace would not have abounded had I not lived that life, certainly it would have, but it had to increase in measure to what my sin had been.

Paul realizes this when he makes the statement about grace abounding, but also realizes that there may be a problem too. If I had a double measure of grace by sinning a lot, why should we not sin? And this is where our sermon begins. We read in Romans 6:1

1What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound?

And what is Paul’s answer?

2By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it? 3Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 4We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.

By no means! Paul is clear here that we are not to continue sinning so that Grace may abound. And his reason is as emphatic as his answer. You have been baptized into Jesus. He is reminding us of our identity. How can we want to sin more, don’t we remember who we are? We died with Christ. How can we go back to that life? It makes no sense.

The reason God gives for not sinning is our Identity. It is not who we are anymore. We are reminded of our baptism. I brought some pictures of the last baptisms a few months ago.

What you see in these shots is a person being held under water. They are not diving in. They are being drowned. They are dying to the old life that held them so tight. How can they go back to that life? How many of you have seen a dead body? As you looked at it, did you ever think, “I wonder what time they will be at work in the morning?” No. And why? Because they are dead. They no longer function in the same way me and you do. This is the image that Paul tells us we are to have to sin. We are dead to it. We will not wake up tomorrow and go to work. We are dead. Sin no longer reigns in us. How then should we go on sinning so that Grace may increase? It is not who we are. Our identity is in Christ and his baptism, not in sin and its life.

Those images of baptism are very important. It is a death. Now for the ancient man this would have been a much more, dare I say real experience. By being baptized in 60 AD one was really dying to the world. What I mean by that is very often before the person was dunked they had family and friends and business associates. They functioned in society like any other member. And then they were held underwater and died. When they arose from the water everything had changed. They were now Christian, and as such were forsaken by their family, abandoned by their friends, and ostracized by society. And more than this there was a real chance they would be rounded up and murdered by the state as entertainment for the very people who just hours before they were part of. When they emerged from baptism, their world was completely different. They truly died to the old ways, and were like babes.

And although it often doesn’t feel that way for us in post-modern America, the truth is the same. We have died to sin, the world, and all its desires. We are now citizens of this new kingdom- the kingdom of God- how are we to return to a country that isn’t ours anymore.

But Paul doesn’t stop there. He continues. Although we were baptized into Christ’s death, we were also raised to a new life. We were brought up from death to a new calling; a newness of Life, Paul calls it. Why should we not continue sinning? We have been given a new life that is so much more. The old life lead to death and destruction and despair. Why would we go back to that when God has prepared for us a better way? Paul continues in this vein. We read in Romans 6:5

5For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. 6We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. 7For one who has died has been set free from sin. 8Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. 9We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. 10For the death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. 11So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.

When we faithed in Christ, something happened. We were united with him in his death. This baptism that Paul had talked about is more than just a symbol. It is more than a way to abandon family and friends. It is a physical symbol of something that happened on a much deeper plain. When we faithed in Christ we were united with him in his death. When we faithed in him our old self was crucified with Christ. When we were held under water we were communicating what had already happened. We died. In as real a sense as we can imagine, we died. But we didn’t die just to die. We died so that we could live. Being united with him in his death, we shall certainly be united with him in his resurrection.

The reason to not sin is not simply because we died, but again, because we have new life. Paul is not telling us a negative command, “Don’t do it.” He is giving us a positive, “Live this new life.” The reason we die with Christ is not so that there are corpses walking around, but so a new life might be born. When we crucified our old self our old life of sin was brought to nothing, and this was so we would no longer be slaves to sin.

Paul continues this thought. A dead man has been set free from sin, he says. Regardless of the spiritual, this is true, is it not? How many dead people do you see robbing banks, killing people, lying? None, I would imagine. And if you ever do see this- run, ‘cause something ain’t right. Run and chop of its head. That’s what I’ve learned from movies- chop of its head. That’s right, I made a zombie joke, and I’m not going to apologize for it. But seriously, the dead can’t sin, they don’t sin, they are dead. This is us. This is who we are. In some real sense we are walking corpses, and as such we have been set free from sin.

Paul writes if we died with him, we will also live with him. Again, Paul is inserting a positive where it seems only a negative exists. Although is some ways we are walking corpses, in another we are truly alive. We have been raised from death to life, and can now live free. The death Christ died he died to sin, and we die to it as well. We unite ourselves with Christ in his death, and so we too have died to sin. But yet again this isn’t the end of the story. Yes we have died with Christ to sin, but Christ lives to God, and so, we, in uniting with him in his death and new life, are also united to this living to God. Paul finishes this paragraph telling us that we must consider ourselves dead to sin and alive to God. This is why we don’t sin anymore. This is why we were baptized.

The reason we are to not sin is that we are living for something different, our hope is in something different, our Identity is in something different. Before we died to sin, we were its slave. We lived for it, we obeyed it, we hoped in it. I know that this sounds strange, but I ask, “Isn’t it true?” Why do people steal? Because their hope is in money. Why do we commit adultery? Because our hope is in other people, relationships? Why do we drink? Because our hope is in the world. I know that is why I did what I did. But Paul is telling us that we are dead to this all. That hope is not ours. That identity is not who we are anymore. That slavery is not for us. We have been freed through death. We have been given new life through crucifixion. We have been given new hope through Christ.

And more than this, we have been given new life. We are no longer citizens of the world, we are citizens of God’s kingdom. We have a new hope and a new life, apart from sin. When we united with Christ we united with him in both his death and resurrection. How can we who died and were given this new life still live in sin? We can’t. We are therefore to remain walking corpses, and yet at the same time be more full of life than anyone else in the world. We are not to live for sin anymore, but for God.

I realize we have been in the Theoretical for most of this sermon, and I want to bring us down to Earth using an example from my own life. As I already said, most of you know my story. And if you didn’t before, you just heard the extremely short version a few minutes ago. Basically, what it comes down to is that I was an active alcoholic. I pursued the bottle and all the side effects of it. And then God, in his grace, rescued me. And it makes for a great story. I love telling it. My life is so different today that it is like night and day, black and white, darkness and light. I used to be a slave to alcohol and sin. And then I died to it. I was given a new life. How many of us would say that I should start drinking heavily again, so that I could stop, thus displaying God’s grace even more? I hope none of us would think that. Nor should I encourage others to walk down the road I travelled either. Sure, when God rescued them it would display even more of his grace, but if I start giving that sort of advice I hope you would not stop short of burning me at the stake as a heretic, in the very least. The very idea seems ridiculous to us, does it not? Go become a drug addict so God can rescue you. Imagine I prescribed a 30pack and a few shots for two years, so people can really get grace. No. You have died to sin, you are a new creation. Live like it.

I hope all of you think that I should stay sober and live like a Christian ought. I also believe most of us would not recommend to others to go become terribly sinful so that “grace may abound”. But Paul writes these words, and I have been preaching on them, so it seems that maybe some of us do say such things- or at the very least, maybe they were back then. At this point it would be a good place to talk about the Gnostics and their belief that you could sin with your body because only spirit mattered, but I am not going to do that, mainly because, although there is a new sort of Gnosticism today, it doesn’t seem that prevalent here, now.

What I am going to do is ask a question. How many of us have sinned today already? How many of us have known character flaws but refuse to fix them? How many of us, in trying to justify our sin have said that we are not fully sanctified yet? Or that we are working on it? Or that we are not perfect? Or that others don’t know our specific circumstances? Or I will stop when they do? Or its not that simple? Or God will forgive me? Or I’ll work on it next time? How many of us have had conversations where people have told us honestly and lovingly where we are living in sin, and we have said if God wants me to change, he is going to have to do it? How many of us have had conversations with ourselves before we sin justifying our actions? Or relying on God’s forgiveness after the fact? Or prayed for forgiveness knowing we will do it again? Okay, so I had more than one question.

If we relate to even on of these questions, are we not just rephrasing what Paul has said, or at the very least, begin walking down that path. What should we say then? Should we continue to sin so that grace may abound? BY NO MEANS. You are dead to it. How can you even entertain the thought of going back. You have been raised from death to life. Let the life you live now no longer be lived for sin, but rather for God.

Paul doesn’t say just don’t sin, and nor will I. He says, in light of the cross, how can you even think about it. Don’t you know that you have died to it. You are no longer its slave. Claim the life, therefore, that God has for you, and live to Him.

After all this theology, Paul wraps up this section as follows:

12Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions. 13 Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness. 14For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.

How do we live this new life? Let not sin reign in your mortal body, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life. Don’t present your members to sin as instruments of unrighteousness. This image is of one at an altar presenting gifts and offerings. And Paul is saying don’t do it. Just don’t. You have a choice. Don’t you know you died to sin? You were united with Christ in his death, and now are being united with him in his life. You are no longer a slave to sin, so stop obeying it, stop offering sacrifice to it, stop letting it control you. Let not sin reign in your mortal bodies. Don’t obey its passions.

Let me ask another question. When was the last time you read of a corpse being arrested for not obeying a states laws? Never. And Why? Because it has died, and the state does not reign over it anymore. So shall it be with us and sin. We are dead to it. We no linger need to obey its lusts and commands. Sin has no dominion over us, for we are under grace. Let us instead then present ourselves before God as people who have been brought from death to life.

We are not part of the old kingdom, the world, the darkness. We are instead children of light, citizens of a heavenly kingdom, a people of God. We no longer need to obey the ruler of this world. We no longer need to worship the darkness. Instead we can live as one who has been freed from the bondage and slavery to sin. We can offer our bodies to God, we can present our members as instruments of righteousness.

Sin has no dominion over us. Where before we were slaves, and could only do as sin directed, today we can be free. Why would we ever choose to sin again? So that grace may abound? Sin has no dominion over us. Let us then live to God. If we truly have been united with him in his death, let us also unite with him in his resurrection and life.

If that list of questions seems familiar to us, we need to ask why? Why do we continue to offer our bodies as instruments of unrighteousness? We no longer need to obey our flesh and its sinful desires. We have been freed with Christ. We died to sin already, why would we go back and offer ourselves as instruments of unrighteousness? How can the dead go back to the land of the living and reside with the others? How can we, being given a new life, return to the former? How can we turn our back on the citizenship offered us out of grace, and bow to the alter of our old ruler? How can we choose sin again?

Don’t you know you have been freed? You no longer need to offer at that twisted alter of sin. The gods of lust and anger, of malice and despair have no power over you anymore. You have been given a new life. God, in his infinite grace has given you his life. You also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God.

So I ask again, what is keeping us from living to God? Why do we continue to live in sin and darkness? What lies are we believing? Who’s alter are we sacrificing on? Why are we, the dead, still trying to live in a world not for us? What parts of our life have we not presented to God? Why are we continuing to live in sin? How are we justifying it?

Don’t you know you died? When you were held under water by another, it was a symbol of what happened to you in the spiritual realms. When you were raised out again you were given a new life. How can we return to before? You are dead to all of that. This world and its powers have no dominion over you. Unite yourselves therefore in Christ’s life, just as you have united yourself with his death. This is not a negative sermon, but a positive. I am not telling us to only stop sinning, but reminding us that there is a life for us that is free from all of it, if we would only claim it. We are not called to only be crucified and die, but rather to be raised from death to new life, and live.

This then is the sermon. Should we sin so that grace may abound? By no means. Don’t you know that when you were baptized into Christ Jesus you were baptized in to his death? You are therefore no longer slaves to sin, for sin has no dominion over you. But not only were you baptized into his death, but also, and much more so, into his life. Live therefore, not for sin, but for God. Live this life that He has for you.

And this life is by grace. It is a free gift of God. He is offering it to you right now, you only need accept it. This life is more than we could possibly dream of. It is freedom. We are called to a new life, a new kingdom, a new existence. We need not earn it, it has already been earned for us by Jesus, we merely need to ask for it. To be united to Christ in this life, we simply have to ask him for it.

If you are here today and you are living as a slave to sin, I tell you there is freedom. Unite yourself to Christ and he will give you new life. You no longer need to be a slave to lusts and passions, darkness and despair, addictions and sin. There is freedom. If you are united with Christ in his death, then surely you will be united with him in his resurrection.

If you are here and see no way out, I tell you there is a light. Follow Christ to his cross, and offer your self to him there. Be raised form death to life in the same way that Christ before us was.

You no longer need to be a slave to sin. It can have no dominion over you anymore. You no longer need be controlled. You no longer need to sacrifice on the alter of sin. You can offer yourself to God, worship him, and be free.

In a minute we are going to have communion. If you are a follower of Christ, or would like to be, I invite you to this table. If you don’t know how to unite yourself to Christ’s death, here is the place to start. It was given by Jesus on the night he was betrayed, and for millennia has been he way Christians remember the death of Jesus. But also know that he rose again. The story doesn’t end here, but rather begins. When we come to the table we remember, not only that we have been united with him in his death, but also that we have been united with him in his life. Before you come here, I challenge you to examine yourself. What of your members have you offered to other alters? In which ways have you let sin once again have dominion over you? Where have you not fully died? Where have you not truly lived? Offer these to God. As you unite yourself once again to Christ’s death, even more so unite yourself to him life. As you come to this alter, present yourself to God as one who was raised from death to life, and offer your bodies as instruments of righteousness.

On the night he was betrayed, Jesus took bread and broke it, and said:

This is my body broken for you. Do this in remembrance of me.

In the same way he took the cup and said:

This cup is the new covenant of my blood. Do this every time you drink of it in remembrance of me.

The band is going to come up and lead us in a time of worship. I encourage you to us this time to search yourself and commune with God. I am going to pray and then if you are a Christian you can come up whenever you are ready and take the bread and cup. If you aren’t, please feel free to use this time to pray, seek God, and think about what you have heard today.

Let us pray.

Next Week I Swear

I am super busy. I apologize for all my empty promises in the past. This week I am giving 2 talks on top of all my other stuff, but next week I will have time to start blogging again. I will be speaking at a Fraternity conference this weekend, which is exciting, and in a few weeks I will be speaking to a Sorority. A few weeks ago I spoke at a Greek Leadership Conference, and since then have been getting requests to come and give talks. I have a heart for these kids, so I couldn't be more thrilled.

God is doing some amazing stuff at Umass, opening doors for me to meet students. We have been having some great Doubt Nights, which have just ended up being at my house on Tuesdays, which was not the plan, but kind of cool anyway. We feed the students, which any college kid can appreciate, and then have some great conversation about everything.

I promise to blog more about this next week, as I will have nothing to do, as well as the following weeks. I will be in N. Carolina for a week and Florida for a week, so won't have much to do but write and speak places, so I will catch all of you up on what has been going on in my life and in my mind. For now, here is this weeks sermon.

It has come to my attention that I have been to harsh on Umass basketball in my sermon a few weeks ago. It seems that the Umass teams that exist today are nothing like the teams when I worked t the Mullins, since these teams may be good. So I apologize to any Umass fans out there. However, as I say this, I would like to draw your attention to the Amherst College Quidich team, who from now on will be getting the blunt of my sports jokes, because even if thy are good, they are playing Quidich. I am glad that you laugh because, I you remember the school yard come back, “Did you stay up all night to think of that?” well in my case the answer is very often yes, and if you don’t laugh it makes me feel sad inside.

We are back to Ephesians this week after a brief break for Easter and we will be finishing up the third chapter of the book. Now, for the first half of the semester, as we have been going through the first half of the book of Ephesians, Paul has kept us in the heavenly realms. His language and prayers are lofty and theological. And there is good reason for this. In the second half of the letter Paul is going to talk about some pretty practical stuff. But before he brings us to the day to day workings of church, he realizes that there is a need to ground us theologically.

There are some very good reasons for this. How can we begin to do church if we don’t fully understand God, who he is, and what he has done. This is also a subtler point than we may think. Our theology defines us. Paul knows this, and so is trying to get the church all on the same page, trying to get them to think correctly about who they are and their relationship to God, and then after this task is complete, we will tell them how to live then, with this knowledge.

So then is this final section Paul is going to pray on last prayer. With this prayer he is going to try to cement in the minds of the Ephesians, what for Paul, is the most important of the theological concepts. And what is this truth. Turn with me to your programs:

Ephesians 3:14-21

14For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, 15from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, 16that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, 17 so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, 18may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, 19and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

20 Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, 21 to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.

What Paul is praying is the following: that we would be strengthened by the Spirit, that Christ would live in us more fully through this power, and that we would fully grasp what is meant by God’s love for us. That is a paraphrase, but it is the crux of the prayer. There then seems to be three parts, and at the risk of being redundant, I will repeat them. 1. That we would be strengthened by God, 2. That we would be filled more with Jesus and 3. That we know, truly know, God’s love. We will spend a little time on each of these things, and actually see that one flows from the others.

All that being said, a few weeks ago, we may remember that I preached about a section in Ephesians 2 where Paul fist prays for the Ephesians. In that prayer Paul talks about the overwhelming power of God. He reminds us about what this power is. He tells us that it is the same power that raised Christ from the dead. In that section he is praying the Ephesians may know what the power of God is. Here he is praying that they might have it.

Very practically we need to know what God’s power is before we can have it, but it also does no good for us to understand God’s power on an intellectual level if we don’t use it. Paul knows this, and is praying that first we would understand, and then, that we would do. Paul here is asking that we would be strengthened with the Spirit in our inner being. And this strength is going to be important for the remainder of the book. It is this strength that is going to allow us to live as Christians. As I said last time we looked at a Pauline Prayer, very often I find that we as Christians live defeated lives. This is partly due to our ignorance of the strength of God. Earlier Paul prayed that we would be able to grasp this strength. Today Paul prays we would have it.

Paul is praying here that we would be strengthened in our innermost being. In our innermost being. This is far more than some surface, good for one time, get out of jail free, kind of strength. This strength isn’t that we would be able to walk away from temptation on occasion, but that our whole being would always have this supernatural power. That this power would just become us. That we could consistently walk away from temptation. That living redeemed lives would be something, we don’t just long for, but actually do. Paul is praying here that the power that raised Christ from the dead would not just be some clever phrase that we pass along, but something we know to our core. He is praying that our identity would be fulfilled. We would not just speak in lofty language and fill our hearts with empty promises, but that we would become who God has called us to be. That we would live lives God has called us to live. That we would be strengthened in our inner most being.

This is something I have had a little bit of experience with. And I am actually not going to talk about drinking this time, though certainly it pertains. See drinking is part of my story, but it is really only small part. The truth is that all of my life was screwed up, and drinking was a symptom more than a cause of that. And then I went to detox and my life was all better. At least that is how I tell the story right. Well the truth is much more than this. See what I hadn’t done before detox was know the power of God. And it wasn’t just with drinking. In fact drinking may have been the last thing in my life to go out of control. My life was a mess in every aspect well before I picked up a bottle. I felt alone and powerless in other aspects of my life, and in a way that is what drove me to drink. Anyway, I went to detox, came out, and really what had changed was two fold. One, I knew the power of God, and two, I had it in my innermost being.

It was the only reason I am able to be here today. It is not like temptations have gone away. They haven’t. God did not remove my desire to drink, per se; he offered me His strength, which allowed me to fight the temptations as they came. In fact, I would almost say I have more temptations today. It is a lot harder to be a father and husband and obey Jesus than it ever was to be single. Today I have to deal with all the same issues single guys do, alcoholics do, but I also have to sacrifice myself for my wife and love my kid. Which seems like it would be easy because they are awesome, but when it is 4 am and you have to work in 2 hours and your kid won’t go to sleep, and your wife won’t make her go to sleep, it is a lot harder to love them selflessly, because they are a lot less awesome.

Anyway, the point is that I have been strengthened by his Spirit, through grace. But this strength has become me. I know I can rely on him in the future because he has proved himself faithful in the past. This Spirit who raised Christ form the dead, this Spirit of God the Almighty, is not only living in me, but accessible. Not only accessible, but abundantly so. Paul is praying that we may be transformed by this truth in all that we are. That the deepest darkest places would also be strengthened and transformed. That it is all possible, that God himself would do it. And notice then what happens. We are strengthened and through this we are brought closer to Christ.

Now this doesn’t mean that God has favorites or that if we sin less than our neighbor God somehow loves us more. God’s position doesn’t change, ours, however can. When Paul writes that Christ would dwell in our hearts through faith in verse 17 and further that the fullness of God might fill us in verse 19, he is not saying that it doesn’t already. If you are a Christian, you have Christ in your heart. Jesus doesn’t leave you because you are struggling. We read throughout Scripture, beginning in the Law that God will not leave nor forsake us, his children.

What I believe Paul is communicating here is something about ourselves. It is what happens to us once we have been strengthened by His Spirit. Paul is communicating the change that occurs when we not only understand the power of God, but we live it. Paul is telling us about what happens to our condition when we stop living defeated, and instead accept the strength of God, let Him change our entire being, and begin to have the redeemed life He has planned for us.

And this is sort of a gradual change. The way I has worked in my life is that I accept a little bit of His strength, and somehow I am able to stop being sinful in a certain way, and this brings me closer to Jesus, which in turn gives me more strength. It is not that Jesus was any less in my heart, but that I was able to experience more of Him.

Let me give you an example from my life.

As I have said before, I was not the greatest husband when Sarah and I first got married. I am not knocking myself here; I don’t think any guy is a good husband at first. I had a wife whose needs were completely different than mine, and I had no idea how to handle this. For a while I threw myself into work, because it was easier to do that come home and work on a relationship. But I knew that what I was doing was wrong, but didn’t know what to do. After Sarah miscarried it got worse, and we were strangers passing in the night. At the same time my spiritual growth was not the best it could be either. Well there as a marriage conference hosted my MERCYhouse and after it Sarah and I were able to begin working on things. What I thought I couldn’t do, like change the way I talked, or be more selfless, began to change because of prayer and repentance. And soon we had a marriage again. And also my relationship with Jesus was better.

Part of the reason for this is when I knew I could not change I my own strength, I would have to cry out to Him and he would change me, in his strength. Once I was able to us the power that the Holy Spirit was providing, I was able to be the husband that God called me to be, and through this, He drew me to himself. Every time Sarah and I had a fight, I would run to God, ask him for his strength, and then approach Sarah, ask for her forgiveness, and try to make things right. I was able to do things that I never thought I could do, like humble myself, because I was relying on the Spirit and his power.

So, as I was strengthened each time, I was brought closer to Jesus. His fullness was more able to shine though, I let him live more fully through me. This is what Paul is saying here. And the converse is also true. If we are not living in His strength, we often feel alone and far away from God. I know I do. The times I feel furthest from Jesus are not the times I am suffering, or the times when I don’t know how we will pay our bills this month, or when we have had real pain, like death. The times I feel most unfilled with Christ are the times that I did not rest in His strength and decided to sin. The times that I have looked both temptation and God in the face and chosen temptation. The times I am felt as though Christ does not live in me are the times that I have tried to kick him out so that I might do as I wanted to, instead of what he would have me do.

This is one of the reasons that I drank for so long. I was sure that God wanted to be far away from me, a terrible sinner. I was sure of my salvation, but less sure that Christ would live in such a man as myself. And occasionally I still feel this way today. I would be lying if I told you that once I had experienced Christ’s power I never faltered. My relationship with God has not been one of a straight line up. There have been days and weeks and months where I would forget that the Spirit of God was in me and filling me with unimaginable power, and because of this would not live redeemed, and my relationship with God suffered.

But at the same time, I can say with assurance that as I have grown those times are getting fewer. Each moment hat I am able to walk away from temptation and rest in his strength, I am brought closer to Jesus. And this is Paul’s prayer for all of us. That we would not only know God’s power in theory, or have a relationship with Jesus in theory, but that we would be transformed down to our core, that we would have a real and vibrant relationship. That Jesus would be our strength and portion, savior and friend.

And all this brings us to the last prayer of Paul’s, which is where our sermon really lies. He prays that

…you, being rooted and grounded in love, 18may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, 19and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge

Paul’s prayer is that we would understand God’s love. Before we move on here, I want to make a few technical remarks. First, there are multiple words for love in Greek, and we need to know which one is being used. Also note that each word had specific and distinct meanings. There was eros which is a romantic love, but could also be used for beauty. So it could be conceivable to use the same word for your spouse and a picture. Then there was philia, which is a friendship love. Next there is storge, which is a love for a family member, and thelema which is love for prominence and such, and finally we have agape, which has no romantic connotation like eros.

Agape has to do with holding one in high regard. It also has a self sacrificing aspect, as well denoting a total commitment to the thing being agaped. Also, when used in the New Testament, it is found to refer to both friends and enemies equally. It is the word used by Matthew when he quotes Jesus as saying, “love your neighbor as yourself.” As well as the love used in John’s gospel when he talks about God. And it is the love used here. Again, this love has nothing to do with natural relations, like storge, and not romantic like eros. It is a sacrificial love.

Another technical note before we go further. Just because this love surpasses knowledge, as Paul says, doesn’t mean it is not knowable. I mean, this is what Paul is praying that we would do, know this love. How can this be the case though? I think the only way to explain it is by analogy. This first analogy is kind of the opposite of what we have going on here, but I think it is helpful to get an idea if the difference between different types of knowledge. It gives us a glimpse into the difference between knowing and knowable.

I tutor in Math occasionally. (And I’m really good if any of you need help.) As I have tutored, I have picked up on a curious phenomenon. People will know a formula, but have no idea what it means, when to use it, or how it works. What I mean is that they know some combination of letters and numbers and signs is supposed to be true, but they can not apply it. For example

If a > p then there exists a b, such that 0≤ b≤ p-1, and b is congruent to a mod p

What this means is simply that any number that is greater than p, when divided by p will have a remainder b. This isn’t really what this means, but this is church, not a math class, so I won’t get you all excited about geek-dom.

The point is that for a specific class, knowing some formulas about modular mathematics, which is what that last equation deals with, is very important. But now all of you know that equation too, but you don’t know it.

What happens when tutoring is they truck thorough the problems, knowing what formula they are supposed to use, but not understanding why or how- and then something happens. A light clicks, the wheel starts turning, and then they are making jumps that the book hasn’t told them to make yet. They know modular mathematics. It is a part of them. When they look at a problem, what they see isn’t numbers, symbols, and letters, they see math.

What they knew in theory, they now know in their being. That is an example of how English fails us, and how something can be known, yet unknown. Again, I think we have here a basic English problem. In other languages there are multiple words for various English ones. The French even have two words for knowing, savior and connaitre. Savior has to do with facts and connaitre with persons- and not facts about persons, but actually having met them and gotten to know them. So, in French at least, like math, you can know something, like the fact about a person, but not know it, because you have never met them. We can know a lot about famous people, but most of us don’t really know them.

What about what Paul is talking about. How can something be knowable but beyond knowledge? Clearly Paul thinks that God’s love can be known, but is beyond all knowledge. Can we find something else that can be known but at the same time beyond knowledge. I think the French gives us some clues to how this may be possible. I can know all the facts about falling in love with someone- how it is supposed to feel, how I will act, etc., but I will not know what falling in love is until I have done it. That example may seem like cheating since Paul is also talking about love, so I will give another. I am stealing this example from John Edwards, so if you have a problem with it, take it up with him. I am pretty sure he is just over the bridge.

Edwards’ example is relatively famous, and yet it is so simple- honey. I hope all of you have the spoons that were given out. I am going to pass out some honey; I don’t want you to eat it yet, but get a little on your spoon. I am now going to tell you some things about honey. It is made by bees. It is sweet. It is made also from flower nectar. It is also super sweet. In fact it is sweeter than sugar. More than this, it has other subtler flavors (like a good wine) that depend on the type of flower the honey is made from. Bears like it a lot. It is also wicked sweet. Did I mention it is sweet?

Now you all know that honey is sweet, right. Well if you don’t, I am telling you that it is. Here is the thing though, until you eat it, you don’t really know how sweet it is. You can eat the honey now. See, it is really sweet. God’s love may be beyond knowledge, i.e. facts and figures and things that can be expressed clearly in words, like the sweetness of honey, but it can also be known by tasting it, like the sweetness of honey. And this is what Paul is praying for the church. That we would know, eat of, drink in, know, God’s love.

So now, with the technicalities out of the way, let’s begin to dive into this love. Paul prays we would know the breadth and length, the height and depth of God’s love, this love that surpasses all knowledge. Now I just gave some compelling arguments about how something can be known, yet be beyond knowledge, but I now want to real that back in and say that, on some level, Paul is trying to communicate that God’s love can not be fully known, at least not yet. That is not to say that we can’t know it now, just not all of it.

Paul does pray though that we would begin to grasp it. And he says that it is big. Here these verses again

18may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, 19and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge

Do you hear how big it is? Paul prays that we may have the strength to understand just a little bit of it. This is the pattern that Paul is praying then, that we would be filled with strength grow closer to Christ, and as we do know more about this love that is beyond us.

Recently I had one of these experiences. Last week was busy. I know for most of you, you got to go on some cool trip, but I work for the church, and last week was Easter week, which means I was able to do anything but go on a cool trip. Easter and Christmas are very busy times if you are employed for the church, as you may have guessed. So, like the model employee I am, I did my work and planned an awesome Good Friday service. Well, somewhere in the week, I kind of lost sight of Good Friday, and just wanted to plan the darn thing so I could finish my tasks.

And then Good Friday came. I was very stressed because things weren’t done when I wanted them to be done, I had more work than I should have because of some lousy time management the previous days, as well as a sick kid, and on top of all this, the computer decided to stop working. But the service started nonetheless, and things were going pretty well, I think, and then someone gave their testimony, and I stopped working for a bit, and listened. And then some songs were played, and I stopped working and I sang, and then some Scripture was read, and I stopped working, and I worshipped. And by the end of the service, it was all I could do to not cry on mic. And the reason for this?

I was able, at that moment, to understand a little bit of this love that surpasses all knowledge.

As I heard about what Christ did, how he was flogged. How the flesh was torn from his back, how he walked to a place called Golgotha, how he fell with a 100lb cross on his back, how he was wearing a crown of thorns. As I really listened to how he was stretched out upon a wooden beam and how his arms were then nailed down, how his feet were bound and nailed as well, how the crowd mocked him, about how the Father turned away and let his one and only Son slowly suffocate to death as his mangled, beaten, and bloody body did everything it could to survive, and how with his last breathes he asks that his God, the very one who let him up there to die, would forgive the very same people who hit him, spit on him, crucified him. As I heard afresh that the sinless Lamb became as sin so that I might go free, I understood this love that surpasses all knowledge, and I cried.

I cried at his pain, I cried at my guilt, I cried out of joy. This is what Paul is praying for all of us. That we may know with our whole being this love, the height and depth and width and length.

I am going to plat a short clip that helps illustrate this love. ( clip is from “Blood Diamaond”)

That Father took back his son, and loved him in spite of all the terrible atrocities that his kid had committed. And this is only the tip of the iceberg for God’s love. For one, we are adopted. God was under no obligation to love us, like a father is for his kids. We were not his kids to begin with. We were orphans, rebellious jerks, who forsook God and decided to go it alone. Like the Prodigal Sons we walked away, telling God he was dead to us, and gave up our family rights. And God took us back anyway.

As we stood before him, crying about the sins we had committed, about how unworthy we were, we cried along with us and told us he loved us anyway. This is more than the love of a father; it is the love of the Father.

But more than this, not only did we walk away from him, we then killed his one and only begotten Son. We didn’t just murder others, we murdered the one most precious to him, and still he held us in his arms and told us that he loved us.

And not only did he hold us, he is the one ho sent his son to die for us in the first place. He loves us so much that he was willing to sacrifice is son, the holy and blameless Lamb, that we might be able to fall at his feet, and he look upon us and tell that he loves us.

This is the love of God, that he would take on human flesh, suffer and die, become as sin, that we might become sinless. This is the love of God, that the wrath that was meant for us, was poured out on another, Jesus Christ, that we might go free.

This is the love of God, that regardless of who you are and what you have done, no matter for how long or ho far away you have run from Him, no matter how great the atrocities, or how dark your soul, He would pick you up and tell you, his adopted child, that he does not care, he forgives you, he loves you anyway.

This is the Love of God.

This is what Paul desperately prays that we would understand.

This is the height and depth and breadth and width. This is the Love of God!

If you are here today and you want to experience this love that I am talking about, it is not hard to get. All you need do is lay yourself before the Father and ask for the forgiveness he wants to give. There is nothing you can do that is too great a sin. There I no thought or act so grievous that he won’t take you into his arms and tell you that he loves you.

If you are not a Christian, this first starts with becoming one. Accept the ransom the Jesus paid for you. Accept his love. He died a horrific death that you may live, and all he asks is that you accept it. Come before his Cross, kneel before his thrown, and ask that you may be forgiven today. Ask that you may be welcomed into the family, ask that he would adopt you. Find your identity in Him and begin to know this love that surpasses all knowledge. Cast off this world and its chains, and run as a child into the arms of the Father, who has been waiting for you all this time. Throw off your despair and pain and brokenness, and accept instead the full measure of his love, its height, and depth and breadth and width. Come to God and regain the life he always meant for you to have.

If you are a follower of Christ, I say the same things. Know more fully the love he has for you. Even more so now that you are his son or daughter. Were before you were orphans, not you are His children. Nothing you can do will change that fact. You are sealed. The Spirit lives in you. You have access to the same power that raised Christ from the dead. Stop running from God, and instead move to him. His arms are still out for you. You are his child. He loves you. He loves you with a love that is beyond description, with a love that drove him to a cross, with a love that washes you clean as the morning snow.

I want all of us to hear, one last time this prayer of Paul’s:

14For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, 15from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, 16that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, 17 so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, 18may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, 19and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

20 Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, 21 to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever.

Amen.