Romans 8:1-11; The Verdict Is In

Jason Sterling April 26, 2026 Faith Presbyterian Church Birmingham, AL Bulletin

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Transcript

Romans 8 Opens The Door

SPEAKER_00 0:23

You have a copy of God's word, turn with me this morning to the book of Romans. So go to your New Testament, Romans chapter 8 this morning. We've been working our way through the this book this fall or spring, I'm sorry. And if you were here with us last week, we heard Paul talking and giving us one of the most honest passages in all of the New Testament. He says the thing he does is what he hates, and he can't do what he loves. And so we feel this tension in Paul. And he, if you remember, he ends by saying, What wretched, what a wretched man that I am. Who can deliver me from this body of death? And then he actually answers the question. And he says, Thanks be to God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Who will deliver us from our body of death? Jesus will deliver us. And we get to chapter 8, and Paul begins to open that up and tell us exactly what Jesus did to deliver us. Commentators throughout centuries have called this the greatest chapter in all the Bible. We're going to spend a few weeks in Romans chapter 8. Let's read this passage together, and then I'll pray for us. This is the word of God. For God has done what the law weakened by the flesh could not do by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh, but according to the spirit. For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the spirit set their minds on the things of the spirit. For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the spirit is life and peace. For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God's law, indeed it cannot, and those who are in the flesh cannot please God. You, however, are not in the flesh, but in the spirit, if in fact the spirit of God dwells in you. Any one who does not have the spirit of Christ does not belong to him. But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the spirit is life because of righteousness. If the spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his spirit who dwells in you. This is God's word. Let's pray and ask for the Holy Spirit to help us with the hearing of the word, but also uh the teaching of the word this morning. Let's bow with me and let's pray. Father, you have brought us here, and I pray that you would give us receptive hearts, that you would help me as I teach this passage, and that you would help us. We, your servants, are listening. Please help us and teach us and show us how good the gospel is this morning. We want to live differently, we want to change, and would you do that now through the power of your spirit, through the teaching and preaching of your word. In Jesus' name. Amen. How do you know if you're okay with God right now? How do you know if you are okay with God right now? Here's how you find out. Think about the last time that you sinned. Not years ago, but recently. And what happened inside you immediately after that? What was your reaction? And whatever it was tells you everything that you need to know about what you actually believe about you and about God. You see, most of us answer that question. How do you know if you're okay right now? You know where we immediately go? To our performance, to how well we are living out the Christian life. Some days we feel fine, other days we we don't, and we spend the rest of the day. You know what that's like? We spend the rest of the day trying to get back to being okay. And that's the way I lived most of my Christian life, to be honest with you. For the first half of my Christian life, and it was not much fun at all. In fact, it was pretty miserable and pretty exhausting. In Romans chapter 8, Paul writes to those of us who are tired of that cycle. And he tells us that we're asking the wrong question and that the answer does not come from inside us, it comes from outside of us. From what God has already done, from who God has already sent, and from whom God has already put inside of us. What Paul wants to give us today, if we'll receive it, is a hope that doesn't depend on ourselves, but depend and how we're doing, but depends on Jesus and what he's done. Three things this morning: the verdict, the mind, the guarantee. The verdict, the mind, and the guarantee. Let's look at our first heading, and we'll take these in turn this morning. The verdict, look at verse one. It begins with therefore, and that's a hinge word. Anytime we're reading and studying our Bibles and we see the word therefore, we need to pay attention because it's pointing us backwards. And that's what therefore is doing. It's pointing us back to everything that we've been talking about in the book of Romans, to the wrath of God, to the failure of uh human at our attempts at righteousness as human beings. Points us back to justification and union with Christ and the war within. And all of that is leading right here. Seven chapters of diagnosis, of courtroom, of battle, and Paul answers it with a single sentence. There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Let's pause right here just for a second and let's linger. Because a lot of us have been hearing that verse. If you've grown up in the church and around the church for as long as you can remember, and it no longer moves us. It goes in one ear and out the other. And so, Holy Spirit, come and help us to hear this like we're hearing it for the first time. That's my prayer. Notice what Paul says. He doesn't say less condemnation, he does not say condemnation is paused or suspended when you're doing really, really well. And then it comes crashing back in when you sin. That's not what he says. There is no condemnation, none. And it's emphatic. The word that Paul uses here doesn't mean it's not just not, but it could be read never, not at all. It doesn't, condemnation doesn't exist for the Christian. And then look at verses two through four. He tells us why. And the first answer comes from inside of us with the Spirit. When you become a Christian, the Holy Spirit moves into your life, and the power of sin in your life is broken. It doesn't mean the fight's not over. That's Romans 7. But the authority and the mastery of sin is. There is a new power living in you that is stronger than your sin. The second answer he gives comes from outside of you, from the cross. The law could tell you what was wrong with you. The law could tell you and name your sin and hold it up and show you exactly where you fell short, but the law has no power to fix you and to fix it. It's a diagnosis without a cure. And that's all the law could ever do. And so Jesus does something about it. God does something about it. He sends his own son in the likeness of sinful flesh. What does that mean? It just means that God became human in the person of Jesus Christ. The sentence for our sin had to land somewhere, and it landed on Jesus. There is nothing left to land on you. 2 Corinthians 5.21, God made him who knew no sin, Jesus, to become sin for us so that we might become the righteousness of God. And did you catch the Trinity at work in verses 2 through 4? It's easy to miss. The Father sent, the Son bore, the Spirit applies. Think about that. Every person of the Godhead is mobilized for you to get you out from under a verdict permanently. So that word condemned would never be spoken over you again. And did you notice, Paul, what he does not say? I like to point this out oftentimes as I work through passages. He does not say that there's no sin. He's not minimizing what you've done. He's not telling you that it wasn't that bad and that your sin wasn't real and what you did wasn't real. What he's getting at is what has been completely and finally abolished is the verdict of sin. And the sentence, God's judgment against you, gone, so that now the only thing for you is acceptance and welcome from God. Dane Ortland in his book Deeper tells this story, true story, 2013, in a Nigerian newspaper. There's an article about a man that's been brought before the higher court, and the judge looks at him and he hears the case, and the man's acquitted, fully, completely discharged of all of his charges. They're all dropped. He is free to go, but the man refuses. And a guard actually intercepts him and says, No, no, you don't understand. You must have heard this wrong. You're free. The charges have been dropped, you are acquitted. And he looks at him and says, He's going nowhere. And he starts to go into the prison. And those that are witnessing this scene said it turned absurd. This man started shouting and thrashing, trying to get back into prison. It took six prison officials and officers to get him off of the court premises. That's often a picture of us. Is it not? At conversion, we walk out of the courtroom and then we start living the Christian life, and all of a sudden we suffer gospel amnesia, and we start walking back in. We know the verdict. We hear it preached. We sing it. We experience it every week around the table, around the Lord's Supper, and then Tuesday comes and we walk straight back into the courtroom and we take our seat at the defendant's table like we never left. What does that actually look like day to day for us to still be in the courtroom? Well, maybe you sin. Maybe you look at the thing that you said you would never look at again, or you are cruel and say something to your spouse, or you nurse bitterness in your heart that you can't seem to put down and let go of, and then immediately you turn in those moments and you start trying to manage God. And you start checking the scoreboard to see where you stand. And some days you're up and some days you're down, you're never quite sure if you're okay. And you've been doing that for long enough that you have quietly concluded, maybe, that that's just the way it is. That is just what the Christian life feels like. That's misery. There's no joy there. Who likes a perpetual audit? Who likes the feeling of never being settled? That exhaustion is what living at the defendant's table actually produces. And here's what's strange about living that way is we often think that if we can muster up enough guilt and shame, that that will somehow make us holier. It doesn't. It actually has the opposite effect. It actually takes you the opposite direction. Friends, the person who never grasps no condemnation, they obey out of fear and duty, which is the weakest motivation possible. They feel more shame and less freedom. They feel more drivenness and less joy. Guilt without gospel doesn't produce transformation, it produces exhaustion. Romans 8:1. Please hear it. Is in the present tense. It is a permanent reality. The verdict didn't expire. It doesn't fluctuate. You don't go back under it and under a review and audit every single time you sin. You see, the move here is remembering who you are and what Jesus has done for you. The verdict is final. There is nothing left to condemn you. We never graduate from Romans chapter 8, verse 1. Never. We go deeper into it. We go deeper into there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Will you believe that anew this morning? Secondly, the mind. Paul has told us that Christ, he just told us what he secured legally. Now he moves to what the Spirit is actually doing. Before we get there, look at verse 4. It's a hinge verse. Notice the phrase, it's doing a lot of work in order that. So the verdict, verse 1, is not the end goal. The verdict is the foundation. God didn't just declare you not guilty and say, all right, stay there, you're good. No, he doesn't leave you there. The secured verdict was so that you would actually grow and live differently. Let me say it another way. The verdict produces the actual transformation. And that's where a lot of us, I think, get stuck. We hear no condemnation and we believe it, at least intellectually, but at the same time, we feel that pull in your heart. You feel the patterns of sin still creeping in, and you feel the war in your soul, and you wonder why the verdict is not sticking. And you wonder, and it seems like it's not changing anything. Well, Paul answers this in verses five through eight. Look at those verses. He introduces a word there that gets translated in our translations as mind. But it means more than just what you think about. The word literally means what preoccupies you, what you daydream about, what you get absorbed by, where your mind drifts when there's nothing there demanding it to go in a certain direction, the deep orientation of your inner life. And if you keep reading, Paul talks about two kinds of people: those that have their minds set on the flesh, those who have the mind of the spirit, and he says that deep preoccupation determines everything: your conduct and your direction and your state. And if your mind's set on the flesh, look at where it leads to death, but set on the spirit to life and peace. William Temple was the Archbishop of Canterbury. And he once said, Your religion is what you do with your solitude. Your religion is what you do with your solitude. And here's what he meant. Wherever your mind goes most naturally, when nothing else is demanding it, that's what you're actually living for. Not what you say you believe, not what we sing about on Sunday, but what occupies you, what preoccupies you when you're driving to work at eight o'clock in the morning on Monday? When you wake up and can't sleep at 2 a.m. What preoccupies your mind? When you're sitting in a waiting room with no cell phone and nothing to distract you, where does your mind naturally go? Your solitude tells you the truth about your preoccupation, and your preoccupation tells you the truth about what you're actually living for. For some people, it's a person. Others, it's this quiet hum of anxiety that lives underneath the surface, always wondering whether you're really enough. What is it for you this morning? Where does your mind go without being invited? And then the question is, well, what does it look like to have the mind of the spirit? Well, maybe we think, well, I've just got to quote Bible verses all day, or I've got to, that's not bad. Or I gotta think about theology all day. It isn't a feeling you manufacture. And according, and we'll get there next week. Look at verses 14 and 16. If you have your Bible open, the Spirit's primary work, you know what? The mind of the Spirit? One word Jesus. You're consumed with Jesus. And his love for you. Look at that. The Spirit's primary work, 14 and 16, is to bear witness that you belong to God. The Spirit takes the verdict in verse 1 and makes it personal in your life. When you feel that pull towards sin, not just the behavior, but the pull underneath it, the first move is not to wag your finger and say, stop it. The first move in that moment is to ask questions and to get curious about what's going on inside of you. You've forgotten something. You've forgotten who you are. So the first move is to remember what is already true right now. Not God will get me, not what kind of Christian does this, but just I am a child of God. The verdict is in, and it is final, and this sin has no ultimate claim on me. Because you see, sin doesn't grow in the soil of strength, it grows in the soil of forgetting. Forgetting what you have, forgetting whose you are. The gospel doesn't fight sin by making the law louder, it fights sin by bringing you back over and over and over again to what is already true. And here's what starts to happen over time. The pull of sin starts to come, but underneath it, there's something that's already there. And it's not willpower and it's not fear, it's this quiet settledness and knowledge that you are loved and that you belong to God and that Jesus has died for you, and something in you just doesn't want, whatever it is, want that thing the way that you used to. You start to say inside of you, why would I trade what I have for that? Why would I want that when I have him and when I am loved like this by Jesus? You see, the gospel, that's what the gospel produces, a deeper knowing, a deeper knowledge about what is already true. And when you grow deeper, there's less room in your life for anything else. Lastly, the guarantee. He brings everything home. Look at verse 9. We get the past, the present, and the future. The past in verse 9, your history. The spirit dwells in you when you become a Christian, not a partial spirit. The full, undivided, personal presence of the Holy Spirit takes up personal residence inside of you. And then Paul adds this little sentence here: anyone who does not have the spirit, it's strong. Whoever does not have the spirit does not belong to him. That's Paul's only dividing line here. He draws is the spirit, not your performance, not whether your faith feels strong or weak this week. Which means the question that you're probably asking right now, okay, well, how do I know if I have the Holy Spirit dwelling inside of me? Well, that's another sermon, but let me give you a couple of thoughts. It's simpler than you think. Most of the time, and and it's not a, because we often think this, a sustained emotional feeling. It is asking questions like, am I indifferent towards my sin? Or am I convicted by my sin? Because one of the roles of the Spirit is conviction of sin. It is a real, even weak desire for God, a sense that Christ matters to you, that the gospel has moved you in some way to cry towards God as Father, even if it's a faint one. You didn't manufacture that cry. That is the Spirit bearing witness with your spirit that you belong. And where the Spirit is, Christ is. And so it's not a strength, it's not a test on how strong your faith is. Paul is getting at the presence of faith in you. Verse 10 is your present. And look at what he says. If Christ is in you, he says, your body is dying. And he doesn't soften this, and he doesn't elsewhere. In 2 Corinthians 4, remember Paul says, My outward body's wasting away, but my inner body is being made new. From the moment you came into this world, you begin dying. You begin returning to the dust. But your spirit, Paul says, has been made alive to God in a way that death cannot undo. Verse 11, your future. This should stop us. Again, this is one of these verses I think we read over. Let me read it again. If the spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his spirit who dwells in you. The spirit inside you right now is the spirit of the resurrection. The same power that rolled the stone away. That power, that exact power, lives in you. I mean, that that is hard to get our minds around. And Paul says, God will do to your body what he did to Jesus' body. What did he do to Jesus' body? He raised it. And that means through faith in Christ, one day you will be raised. Your resurrection, write it down, is as certain as Christ's resurrection. In Yellowstone National Park, there's a geyser called Beehive that erupts every couple of days. And the only way you know it's getting ready to erupt is there is a small indicator geyser that fires about 20 minutes before. And there's park volunteers like watching for the indicator round the clock. And once they see it, they get on the loudspeaker and they tell people drop everything and come on. You've got to see this. Get to beehive. Something is coming. Jesus' resurrection is the indicator. Your resurrection is beehive, is the beehive. And the spirit living in you right now is the loudspeaker, announcing to you, already sounding, that what happened to Jesus is coming for you. Some of you carried something heavy into this room this morning. You've lost someone you love. Your body is failing you. You have a diagnosis that has changed everything. You have this grief inside of your soul that doesn't seem to lift. There is a sin that you've struggled with so for so long. You're wondering if you're going to be free from it this side of glory, whatever it is this morning that you carried in here that is causing you pain, this verse is for you. Friends, the Holy Spirit is not a coping mechanism. The Holy Spirit is a guarantee, a down payment on what is coming. And your body is not in its final state if you know Jesus. Yes, the decay is real. Yes, the pain is real. Paul doesn't deny it, but it does not have the last word. Do you need hope this morning? Are you carrying something that you can't shake? That you can't seem to put down. The verdict is final. The Spirit is present. The resurrection is coming. Amen. Let's pray. Father, thank you for Jesus. Thanking, thank you for taking the punishment that we deserved and breaking sin's penalty and power in our lives. Would you forgive us this morning for the ways that we keep walking back into the courtroom? And Holy Spirit, help us, please, to do what only you can do, and that is reorient us and remind us of who we belong to. Holy Spirit, make the resurrection more real to our lives so that it sustains us and gives us hope today. In Jesus' name, amen.