Blessed Assurance (Romans 8:1-17)

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Here we are on the third of January and most New Years Resolutions have already been broken. A long time ago, I gave up making them in the first place because of how discouraging it is to fail so quickly. Failure is no fun. I’ve shared with you before how I remember reading Romans 7 when I was a child and thinking that it sounded a lot like my own experience. I hated my own sinful actions; I wanted to do what was right but was unable to do so; I delighted in God’s law in my heart but found myself doing the very things that I hated. I wanted to cry out with Paul, “Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?” And I still do. Not that I am alone in this experience. I also have shared with you the story of Janet Dempster. It is a fictional story of this lady who married a respectable man who in private was an angry and abusive alcoholic. Overwhelmed by her guilt and shame she turned to alcohol to numb the pain. Then one day she shared with a minister of the Gospel her story, but she might as well have been quoting Romans 7. The story resonates with us because it is our story, even if not in the precise details. The Christians in Rome in Paul’s day were no different. Every believer knows this struggle because we continue to live in the old age. Romans 7 is about learning from failing and failure is discouraging. We strive to keep the law perfectly and to say that we come up short would be a gross understatement. But then we turn to Romans 8 and we find these words of encouragement:

Romans 8:1-17

1. You have the blessed assurance of the Spirit of Life and Adoption that God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do.

   1. Romans 8 does not offer you words of encouragement to the effect that if you just try harder then you will be able to perfectly keep the law of God and live. After all, you know what the law cannot do by the repeated experience of failing. The law, weakened by the flesh, cannot give you life. Just the opposite happens. Romans 7 had described how sin seizes an opportunity to use the law of God to kill you. Indeed, the Holy Spirit ministers the law to you in order to kill the old person within you – not to put your old self on a ventilator in an ICU. So then when you continue to read in Romans and come to chapter eight, verse 3, you discover for the first time or the billionth time, “God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do.” (So these words of encouragement do not point you to yourself and to a false hope of your ability to do the righteous requirement of the law and live, they point you to what God has done in Christ Jesus.)

   2. Instead, Paul continues this way: “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.” Note that the phrase, “in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us” is passive. You are not the actor. It is tempting to read the verse as if you do the righteous requirement of the law, but Paul means that God has done it in Christ Jesus. He fulfilled the righteous requirement of the law in us. After all, Paul’s thesis in Romans is: “the one who is righteous-by-faith will live” (Rom 1:17). You see how God applies it to you as Paul says there in Romans 8:13: “if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.” This is what we call in theology progressive sanctification even though you never progress during this life from being dead to being only alive. For you are both dead, as Romans 7 painfully reminds you, and alive by faith in Jesus Christ as Romans 8 thankfully assures you. The Spirit both ministers the law to kill your old self and the gospel in order to raise your new self. Unfortunately because you still live in the old age you will continue to experience Romans 7, but because you are already living in the new creation you also can experience the blessing of assurance described in Romans 8.

   3. Thus as you struggle with seeing yourself in Romans 7, Paul describes the positive part of your present experience in Romans 8. The assurance for all those united to Christ is that you have the Spirit of Life and Adoption. You might be discouraged if you never move beyond seeing what the law shows, but you should be encouraged whenever you discover or rediscover how God sees you. It is not the law but the gospel that says you will live and that you are children of God. As Paul said, “the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death” (Rom 8:2) and again, “you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons…the Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God” (Rom 8:15-16).

2. Paul describes both sides of your present experience in order to encourage you to embrace your role in God’s mission to save sinners.

   1. You already have seen how Paul was able to describe his own struggle in a way that the Christians in Rome might realize that they too are wretched people in need of deliverance from their own body of death as much as those they might consider awful barbarians. Paul wants them to see that God is on a mission to save those Romans thought of as barbarians and who lived in a far away land. We have already quoted Paul’s explanation of the incarnation: “for [God] sent His Son in the likeness of sinful flesh.” In other words, God sent His Son in the flesh in order to save wretched people like Jews and Greeks, or Romans and barbarians. The Christians in Rome were only part of those for whom God sent Jesus.

   2. Likewise, Paul wants us to see that the good news we believe and the assurance that we have from God is for all who are in Christ Jesus. It is not as if some people were worthy to receive life from God. All have sinned and are falling short of the glory of God. But the good news is: “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Rom 8:1). All those in Christ Jesus can have the blessed assurance of the Spirit of Life and Adoption in their hearts. Knowing that assurance, we are not to fall back into fear or to seek to avoid all suffering. Instead, we know that as the Father sent His Son into the world in the likeness of sinful flesh so too Jesus is sending us who are in the likeness of sinful flesh (for we still experience Romans 7) into the world so that the world might be saved through Him.