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Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father, through our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. Let us pray.

 

O Lord, send forth your word into our ears that it may bear fruit in our lives. In Jesus' name. Amen.

 

It takes a lot of creativity to invent an alternate universe in which to set a fictional story. It's even more complicated when the stories created are loved so passionately that fans begin to notice discrepancies. They point out unanswered questions or plot holes.

 

For example, if the whole point of sending Luke Skywalker into hiding was to protect him from Darth Vader, why send him back to his father's home planet and why not change his name? It's a plot hole, one that was most likely created by adding a plot twist later on, but the effect is that after people enjoy the emotional high of the happy ending, they later look back and realize there are some unanswered questions. Such is the reality that helps us understand what's going on in Romans chapters 9 through 11. The first half of Romans chapters 1 through 8 is a beautiful crescendo.

 

The climactic words of chapter 8 just layered with gospel promise. There is no condemnation for God's chosen ones. If God is for us, nothing can stand against us.

 

There's nothing that can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus. And it's not hard to imagine the swell of comfort the first hearers would have heard and felt with these strong words of gospel promise. That's comfort we ourselves feel at these words.

 

But now imagine what would happen if the epistle ended there. Imagine yourself on the walk home, maybe later in the week. Step into the shoes of a first century Christian being told that Jesus is the fulfillment of the law.

 

He is the Messiah promised to Israel from of old. Imagine hearing that nothing can separate God's people from him. And then picture walking into the market, seeing all those Jews in your city who rejected Jesus as the Messiah.

 

Imagine being a Jewish Christian yourself who was rejected by your own family, cast out of the synagogue for following Jesus. Would you not then ask Paul the simple question about the seemingly glaring hole in his argument? Paul, if God's choosing is so certain, why have the majority of his people refused to believe in him? Why aren't all the Jews followers of Jesus? And it would be a fair question. And it's the question that Paul takes up in today's text.

 

In a few chapters, he'll address the Gentile Christians more directly. But today, he begins an answer focused on the Jewish conference, and he starts by pointing out the anguish that he feels based on the sad reality. Those Jews who rejected Jesus are his kinsmen.

 

They are the Israelites. They are born the people of God. To them belongs the adoption in Abraham, being chose out of all people on earth purely by the grace of God without any merit or worthiness in them.

 

To them belongs the glory of God at the tabernacle, in the temple, God's gracious presence among his people. To them belong the covenants God made with Abraham and Moses and David. To them belongs the law given on Mount Sinai, but also the whole law, the Torah, the fullness of God's revelation to the people of earth through the prophets of Israel.

 

To them belongs worship at God's altar where he comes to them to forgive their sins, to dwell among them for their good. To them belong the promises of God, the promise of the Messiah, the restoration that he would bring. To them belongs every advantage over the Gentiles, and yet so many of them are blind to what God is actually doing in Christ.

 

So many of them have rejected the fulfillment and chosen instead to stay with the foreshadowing, and it breaks Paul's heart. And what are we to say to that? Perhaps the first thing we can say and should say is that Paul's lament over the Jews of his day easily translates into our own setting, into our own lives. It's not hard for us to look at Christians born and raised in the faith who in adulthood turn away.

 

We might say to them belong the water and the word, the body and the blood. To them was given the liturgy and the catechism, but where are they now? And our hearts might break like Paul's, especially when those who have walked away are our own children, our grandchildren, our brothers and sisters, family and friends for whom we care deeply, which is why Paul's next words are as important for us as they were for the Jewish Christians of the first century. As sad as the reality is, it's not as though God's word has failed.

 

God's word does not fail. Paul goes on from there. To be an Israelite of the Old Testament was not a matter of genetics, he says.

 

It's a matter of confession, a matter of being chosen by God. It was not determined ultimately by whom your father or grandfather was. It was determined by whose altar you worshiped at, which God you trusted.

 

Not all who were genetic descendants of Abraham were true Israelites, but only those who trusted in God's promise. It was not the descendants of Abraham through Ishmael who were the people of God, but the descendants of Isaac, but not even all the descendants of Isaac. For those who were descendants of Isaac through Esau were not even Israelites, even though they could trace their lineage back to Abraham through Isaac.

 

Paul's pointing out the key factor is not DNA. The key factor is the promise of God, a matter of God's choice, not man's genetics, which of course raises the objection that Paul anticipates. Paul, that doesn't seem fair.

 

If it truly does all come down to God's choice, then why would anyone be left out? Paul, why doesn't God just choose everyone? Again, it's a good question, and it's an objection that Paul answers in two parts. First, he echoes the sentiment of God's words to Job when Job begins to question whether or not God really knew what he was doing. Who are you, Paul says.

 

Who are you, oh man, to answer back to God? Can that which is created say to the creator, why have you made me like this? Can man say to God, you're doing it wrong? Paul then provides a series of Old Testament references from Hosea and Isaiah and demonstrates that the Jews' rejection of the Messiah was already foretold in the Old Testament. And when we get to chapter 11, Paul's going to point out that it's not like God rejected the Jews entirely. He saved a remnant for himself of first century Jews like Paul, like Peter, like so many other Israelites who did receive Jesus as Lord.

 

We'll look at that text in a few weeks when we get there, but today, today what we're left with is one of the great unanswered questions of scripture. A plot hole, according to some. Supposedly irreconcilable inconsistency.

 

If God desires all to be saved and if the death of Jesus on the cross is really for all people, if faith comes by hearing the proclamation of that message, then why are not all who hear saved? Why do some people not believe? Why did so many first century Jews reject their Messiah? Why do so many of our own fall away? And it's a good question and it's a fair question and it's a hard question and it's a question that our Lord refuses to answer in the way that we want. He refuses to point us to something specific that we could maybe manipulate, somehow modify or tap into to ensure a successful evangelism. Instead, our Lord gives us two simple truths to stand on.

 

First, to use Paul's language from Romans 9, it's not as though the word of God has failed. Whatever else is going on that's resulting in people falling away from the faith, the fault is not in God's word. The failure, the shortcoming is not in the work of Christ.

 

And it's an invitation for us to continue to cling to that word, to look at Christ alone as our hope and our comfort. The work of Jesus on the cross was for all people, which means it was for you. Paul has already made that abundantly clear in Romans, for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God and all have been declared right with God through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.

 

All have been declared right. And as the trespass of one man led to condemnation for all people, so also one man's act of righteousness leads to justification for all people. Paul is adamant.

 

The cross was for all people, which means the cross is for you. And so we cling to that cross. We cling to the hope it brings, especially in the midst of things we cannot understand.

 

That's the second thing we're given to remember. It's the next thing Paul says, the knowledge about why some believe and why others don't. So that knowledge belongs to God himself.

 

It's not our concern. Now the sinful flesh will not see this as a gift. The sinful flesh sees this as an insult because the nature of the sinful flesh is that it always wants to be in charge.

 

The sinful flesh wants to be top dog. Satan and his demons were cast out of heaven for trying to usurp God's throne. The temptation in the garden was to be like God.

 

And so also in questions like this, the desire of the sinful flesh is to accuse God of injustice, to accuse the one whose very nature is justice. So Satan presents it as if it's a simple request for clarification. That's because Satan is clever.

 

He frames it as God's refusal to answer as some sort of insult to our intelligence. But the great deceiver is just pulling a bait and switch. If God's word about justice cannot be trusted, then none of his word can be trusted.

 

Not his promise that Jesus is the name under heaven by which we have been saved. Not his promise that comes by hearing. Not his promise that baptism now saves you.

 

Not his promise that the bread and wine of this altar is the body and blood of Jesus for the forgiveness of your sins. Not any of his promises. The deceiver packages it as if it's a legitimate question about the fairness of God or how God operates.

 

But really it's an assault on the goodness of God and on the trustworthiness of what he says. So in next week's reading from chapter 10, we hear Paul once again direct us out of speculation concerning the hidden things of God and put the spoken word of God, the revealed word of God right before us. Faith comes by hearing, hearing the word of Christ.

 

So today that's where we find our comfort. As Paul says at the end of chapter 9, the first century Gentiles who did not pursue God's righteousness attained it, but the Israelites who pursued the law did not. Why? Because Israel did not pursue God's righteousness through faith.

 

So we will take our stand on the promises of God received in faith. We will not be shaken by Satan's attempts to undermine God's mercy, to get us to doubt God's love for his creation. Like Paul, we will continue to pray for those we love who have fallen away from the faith.

 

We will continue to proclaim God's word of promise and reconciliation to them. No longer the gospel alone produces faith. We continue to pray for reconciliation and restoration and following where Paul is pointing, we find our ultimate hope, our ultimate confidence in the work of Jesus in our place.

 

For if God is the author of it, it cannot fail. We will not allow Satan to distract us with hypotheticals, with questions that our Lord has left unanswered. Instead, we find our comfort in what he has made so abundantly clear.

 

We fix our eyes on Jesus, whom God did not send into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. We rejoice in that salvation. We trust in that salvation.

 

We trust in our Lord's promise that Christ is our rock. We take our stand on him. May God grant it for Jesus' sake.

Amen.

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Transcribed by TurboScribe. Go Unlimited

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father, through our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. And let us pray.

 

Oh Lord, send forth your word into our ears that it may bear fruit in our lives in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, it's been a full two weeks for me.

 

A lot of travel, a lot of long days. I had a great time at Higher Things in Colorado with our youth, and I enjoyed my time at the National Convention. It was nice to catch up with some old friends in both places, nice to make some new connections with people I have not yet met from the Rocky Mountain District.

 

But for me, the best part of both Higher Things and the LCMS Convention was the singing. And don't misunderstand me, I love worshiping here with you at Grace. It's a blessing to be gathered together with you each week around our Lord's gifts of word and sacrament, to sing together here in this place as we've just done.

 

And truly there is no replacement for worshiping consistently with the body of Christ where you are, your home church, the people that you know, the people who know you. You know each other's struggles and joys. You've been through things together.

 

There's no replacement for that. But there is something special about being in a room with about 1,200 people, most of them high schoolers, singing the hymns and the liturgy of the church. There's something special about being in the convention hall with 2,000 other Book of Concord Lutherans from all across the world singing the liturgy and the hymns of the church.

 

There's something about being encircled by those voices. Something about the sound that lingers in the air after the final chord, after the instruments and the voices have stopped. And in that pause, there's something about the experience that's hard to put into words.

 

I love to just sit there and soak in the moment. I feel something similar each time I read the section of Romans that was our epistle for today. If God is for us, who can be against us? Who can bring any charge against the children of God? God's already declared us righteous.

 

What accusation could possibly outweigh God's verdict? We've already been united to our Lord in baptism. What could separate us from him? What could possibly overpower the hand of our Lord that is holding us safe? Nothing. There is nothing that can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

 

When we hear Paul's words, I just want to sit in the air for a few moments. When Paul reaches that climactic proclamation of sweet gospel promise, what could I possibly add to it? What about it is unclear? What needs further elaboration? There is nothing that can separate you from the love of God that is yours in Christ Jesus. Nothing.

 

It's Romans 8, a chapter full of gospel. Paul states clearly and concisely the conclusion that he's been building towards all along. We heard it at the beginning of the chapter.

 

There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus through baptism. We heard it in the middle of the chapter. The sufferings of this present time are not even worth comparing to the glory that will be revealed.

 

We hear it today at the end of the chapter. We know that for those who through baptism now walk a new life of love for God, all things work together for good. Those words are not a warning that if you don't love God nothing will ever go right in your life.

 

They're not a threat along the lines of you better love God or he's gonna get you. These words are a rock-solid promise that for all who love God through faith, the end of our story is resurrection. If God is for us, who can stand against us? Even if we do suffer in this life for a time, what can that ultimately do? We already know we're not going to make it out of this life alive.

 

Our hope is not in avoiding hardship. Our hope is not in being comfortable. Our hope is resurrection.

 

And even if we continue to sin in the flesh, what can that ultimately do? We ought not continue carelessly in sin just so that grace can abound, but neither do we live in fear of sin, as if God's declaration of forgiveness can somehow be undone by our failing. Everything will work out for the good. And it's not just the wishful thinking of a friend who doesn't know what else to say, so all they can come up with is, I'm sure it'll be fine.

 

No, this is the unbreakable gospel promise of the God who gets the last word in all things. And his last word for you is forgiveness, resurrection. And if that's the God who's on your side, truly, who can stand against you? No one.

 

And so you know that all things will work out for the good in the end. That doesn't mean all things are good, but that even the wicked and evil things in this life are, when it comes right down to it, only a small part of a story that ends in resurrection. And Paul offers us more comfort, comfort that's often misunderstood.

 

Paul says that we know that all things will work out for the good because we know that those whom God foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son. That language of foreknowledge, predestination, often makes us uncomfortable. We don't know what to do with it, but our confessions help us see the comfort.

 

Our confessions help us to make a distinction between foreknowledge and predestination. They're not the same thing. Our confessions teach us that God's foreknowledge is his omniscience.

 

It's knowledge that rightly belongs to the one who exists outside of time. And because God exists outside of time, he sees all time, all things, in an instant, which means he knows all things even before they happen in the timeline. But God's foreknowledge doesn't make him the cause of evil or of sin.

 

The cause for those things is us, our sin, this fallen creation. God's predestination, on the other hand, is his choosing, his election, his holy choosing. And it's a promise of comfort to those who have been united to the death and resurrection of Christ in baptism.

 

We've sang it twice already today. It's the reminder that I did not choose God. God chose me.

 

God chose you. And since our salvation rests entirely on his choosing, on his accomplishing, I have no reason to doubt it. There's no way I can undo it, no matter what the circumstances of my life look like at any given moment.

 

It's the next step in what Paul's been doing this entire epistle. We've heard all these chapters and all these readings for the last several months. It makes sense why Paul would mention this here, because it's not a temptation or an invitation to pry into the secret things of God.

 

Remember, Paul began Romans by proclaiming how serious sin really is, and the law's role to keep every mouth silenced, to take away every excuse. And then Paul reminds us that our hope for deliverance is not found in ourselves, it's found in Christ. Abraham believed God, and his faith was counted to him as righteousness.

 

And so also we are right with God on account of what he has done, not what we do for ourselves. Then in chapters 5 and 6, Paul draws our attention to the ongoing battle that we have with sin in the flesh, sin in the world around us, and he exhorts us to see ourselves as our Lord sees us, to consider ourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. Then he addresses the reality of tribulation and hardship, even in the lives of those who have been chosen by God.

 

But he does so with the promise that for those who have been chosen in baptism, all things work out for the good. How could they not? And so we know that our struggles are not a surprise to God, but that as Paul says, he foreknew that the life of Christ would set the pattern for the life of his Christians. Just as Jesus endured hardship, so also does the church.

 

But just as Jesus was raised imperishable and undefiled, so also will his church be raised. The church of Christ is ever being shaped into the image of Christ, and that's an image of death and resurrection. But Paul puts that before us here as comfort.

 

It's the comfort of knowing that the hardships and struggles of a sinful flesh and a fallen world, they're expected. It comes with being chosen by God and being shaped into the image of his Son. So Paul layers comfort upon comfort for us.

 

So as you face whatever difficulty is threatening to steal your comfort, hear Paul's words again. Remember, they are his words for you. For you are one who has sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, and you are one who has been justified freely by his grace as a gift through the redemption that is yours in Christ Jesus.

 

And you are one who was an enemy of God. You were at odds with the creator of the universe, but God showed his love for you, and that while you were still a sinner, Christ died for you and put things right. You have been united to Christ in baptism, sharing with him in a death like his so that you will share with him in a resurrection like his.

 

And yes, you still struggle with sin in this life, but there is nothing that can condemn you. You have been washed by our Lord at his fount. You have been fed by our Lord from his table.

 

You have heard our Lord's proclamation of forgiveness, spoken by one who stands in his stead and to whom he gave authority to comfort you. God has shown you over and over and over again that he is on your side. He has shown you over and over and over again that he is for you.

 

And if God is for us, who can stand against us? He who did not spare his own son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? And who can bring any charge against God's chosen ones? God's the one who justifies. Who's left to condemn us? Jesus is the one who died, and more than that, who lives. He's the one who's sitting at the right hand of the Father.

 

He's the one who's interceding for us. What can separate us from the love of him? Can tribulation or distress or persecution can famine or nakedness or danger or sword? No. No, even in these things we're more than conquerors through him who loved us.

 

For I am sure that neither death nor life nor angels nor rulers nor things present nor things to come nor powers nor height nor depth nor anything whatsoever in all creation, nothing is able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. In Jesus' name, Amen.

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The text for today's sermon is based on the last two verses of the epistle, Romans chapter 8, verse 26 and 27. Likewise, the Spirit helps us in our weakness, for we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. And he who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.

 

These are the words of the text. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

 

Are you a planner? Are you a person who likes structure in life? Do you prefer routine instead of chaos? Calm normalcy instead of noisy disorder? What happens when plans go astray? What happens when the structure and routine go away? What happens when financial setbacks or sickness or a broken relationship interrupts the plan, the structure, the routine? You talk to a trusted friend, an advisor, a pastor. They listen, they empathize, they care. They tell you that they will pray for you.

 

They really do. They encourage you to do likewise. Pray about it, they say.

 

Therein is the problem. You find yourself in such a low place, such despair, such a dead end. You just don't know how to pray.

 

Where do I begin, Lord? How do I approach you with this mess, you ask? Have you ever been at a loss for the words to pray to Almighty God? Join the human race. The last two verses of today's epistle from Saint Paul's letter to the Roman Christians are a jewel that is often overlooked. They are words that bring us comfort and strength in our weakness.

 

The subject of these words is God, the Holy Spirit. The third person of the Most Holy Trinity. We confess our belief in Him in the words of the Nicene Creed.

 

I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and giver of life. I like to think of the Holy Spirit as the silent partner of the Godhead. The one often overlooked but ever present.

 

Constantly working to accomplish the good and gracious will of God in our lives and in the lives of the saints. Keep in mind, this same Holy Spirit was present at creation, Genesis chapter 1 verse 2, as He hovered over the waters. He participated in the creation of Adam, Genesis chapter 2 verse 7, as He breathed into Adam the breath of life.

 

In chapter, in John chapter 14, Jesus promised to send this same Holy Spirit who would be our divine helper and advocate. This is what Saint Paul is referring to in the epistle. When we are so perplexed that we have no idea how to pray or even what to pray for, God the Holy Ghost seamlessly serves as our advocate, our divine lawyer as it were, before the throne of the Father, offering prayer and intercession on our behalf.

 

Like little babies, we are too weak, too helpless to solve our problems. The same Holy Spirit who hovered over the waters at creation, who breathed life into the dust of Adam, who gives life to all that lives. This Holy Spirit intercedes on our behalf before the Father in heaven.

There is no start switch, no mechanism that you must activate to make this happen. It is seamless, automatic, spontaneous on the part of God the Holy Ghost. It is His divine will to assist us, to support us, to sustain us through every need unto eternal life with the angels, archangels, and all the saints in heaven.

 

That is why Saint Paul said, we consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. The world, not knowing the most blessed Holy Trinity, speaks of karma, luck, what goes around comes around and so forth. No matter what gods they serve or philosophies they believe in, the world fails to understand that there is something very unique about the triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

 

That unique quality, three persons in one divine essence, is above all else, the God of loving relationship. Each person in the Godhead is in loving relationship with the other. They do not compete with one another or fight one another.

 

The Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost are in conversation, holy conversation with one another. At creation we hear them say, let us make man, Genesis 1: 26. Words of loving relationship.

 

At Jesus' baptism, God the Father said, this is my beloved Son, Matthew chapter 3:17. Words of loving relationship. At the transfiguration of our Lord, the Father repeated these very same words, Matthew 17 verse 5. On the cross at Calvary, our dying Lord spoke to His Father with haunting words, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Matthew 27:46.

 

Words of deepest relationship. But what does all this have to do with our struggles when plans fall apart? How does it help us when we don't even know how to pray? As we rely upon God, the Holy Spirit, to pray to the Father on our behalf, we learn to make some adjustments. For example, perhaps we should use a pencil when making plans instead of an ink pen.

 

Perhaps the delete button on our devices can be used a bit more often. Confident that the Holy Spirit will lead us in a better direction. Perhaps we will learn to follow the words of Psalm 46 verse 10, be still and know that I am God.

 

If God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son to die in sacrifice for our sins, would not that same love extend unto us in all our sorrows? As it is written in Lamentations chapter three, His compassions fail not. They are new every morning. Great is thy faithfulness.

 

The holy conversation within the most blessed Holy Trinity continues to this day. In love, God the Holy Spirit takes our petitions, our needs, our worries to the throne of the Father. Like a lawyer, an advocate, a counselor in a courthouse, the Holy Ghost represents us in the name of the same Jesus who bore our sins on Calvary.

 

The Holy Spirit intercedes for us in divine conversation in ways we never can. He includes our needs in that holy conversation, the loving relationship we have with the triune God continues forevermore. In the name of Jesus, Amen.

 

The peace of God which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus, Amen.

 

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Transcribed by TurboScribe. Go Unlimited

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father, through our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.  Let us pray.

 

O Lord, send forth your word into our ears that it may bear fruit in our lives. In Jesus' name, amen. The joke that regularly makes its way around social media, perhaps you've heard it, goes something like this.

 

My wife just looked up and said, you aren't even listening, are you? And I thought to myself, well that's a strange way to start a conversation. Today's reading from Romans starts with the words, so then. It's like starting a reading with the word, therefore.

 

It's obviously not the start of the conversation. And in fact, for our text today, it's a climactic moment in the epistle, a conclusion that Paul has been building towards. Because we look at the topics, the vocabulary of all of Romans chapter 8, it becomes clear that Paul is laying out the significance of what he's been saying since chapter 5, all of our readings for the last two months.

 

He began Romans 8 by contrasting living according to the flesh with living according to the Spirit, a theme he's already introduced in chapters 6 and 7. In chapter 8, he returns once again to the language of walking, contrasting those who walk according to the flesh with those who walk according to the Spirit, something he called in chapter 6, walking in newness of life. All he's doing is laying out the implications of the reality he's described in chapters 5 and 6, the reality that we are now at peace with God, no longer enemies with God, at peace with God on account of Christ, that we have been raised with Christ in baptism to walk in newness of life. And because of that, we ought to consider ourselves dead to sin and alive to God.

 

He opened chapter 8 with the comforting reminder that because of what Jesus has done, there's literally nothing left to condemn those who are in Christ through baptism. Jesus has already fulfilled the law by completing its obligations and by suffering as the sin offering to atone. The result is that the requirement of the law is fulfilled by Christ, and when God looks at us, he sees it as fulfilled in us, too.

 

And so yet again, as with the last several chapters, Paul is challenging us to change the way we think, to change how we understand this life and our place in it. The way of the world says that what you do determines who you are. The world tells you you have to be good enough first, have to have the right skills first in order to make the team or get the job.

 

You can't be a computer programmer if you don't know how to write code. You can't be a customer service rep if you're not good with people. You can't be on Broadway if you can't sing or act.

 

In the world, what you do matters first, dictates how you're viewed by the people around you. But the way of Jesus is the opposite. Who you are in Christ is yours as a gift, not by what you've done, but by what he has done for you.

 

And what he's done for you, well, that now determines who you are. Who you already are in him defines how you live. That was the original intent and design of God's covenant with Moses.

 

The idea was that because God had claimed the Israelites as his own, without any merit or worthiness in them, and because he dwelled among them in his tabernacle and he met with them at his altar, they were called to live differently from the nations around them. But it was God's gracious choosing that truly made them who they were, and was God's faithfulness to his promises that sustained them as his people. But nevertheless, Israel began to turn things upside down.

 

They began to see their fulfillment of the covenant as the means by which they kept themselves the chosen people of God. That's because the sinful flesh is always turning things upside down. As Paul puts it in Romans 8, the mindset, the outlook of the flesh is always hostility toward God.

 

And therefore, those who walk hand-in-hand with the flesh cannot please God. They remain enemies with God. But remember, Paul says, while we were enemies of God, Christ died to set things right.

 

And in baptism, you are united to that death, and you are raised to walk differently. Newness of life. Therefore, Paul concludes, we are no longer people of the flesh only, but people in whom the Spirit of God is living and active.

 

And the mindset, the outlook of the Spirit, well, that's peace with God through the sacrifice of Christ and the new life we live in him. Therefore, today's text says, we are debtors. The same idea Paul's already brought in chapter 6. There he says we are slaves to the one that we obey.

 

Either sin, which leads to death, or obedience, which leads to life. In Christ, we are slaves to righteousness. In Christ, we are debtors, not to the flesh, but to the Spirit.

 

And yet, Paul says, we shouldn't think of our place in debt to the Spirit as a life of slavery or fear. You have nothing to be afraid of. Our salvation, our reconciliation to God, it doesn't depend on how well we live in the Spirit.

 

Instead of a spirit of fearfully trying to earn or justify or maintain our place as the people of God by our efforts, we've received the spirit of adoption. You are part of God's family in Christ, united with him in a death like his, in order that you might be united with him in a resurrection like his. We are God's children now.

 

And if children, then heirs with Christ our brother, waiting to receive the final inheritance of new life in a perfect creation. That's where today's text stops, but if you're familiar with Romans, you know that Paul is not done heaping comfort upon comfort. As you no doubt already know, Romans 8 is one of the most comforting chapters in all of Scripture.

 

You'll hear it over the next few weeks. There is nothing, nothing left to condemn those who are in Christ Jesus. The sufferings of this present time aren't even worth comparing to the glory to be revealed.

 

And if God is for us, who could be against us? But today we pause where Paul's reading ends, today's text ends, reminded of the reality that Paul puts before us today. It's the reality he's been putting before us throughout the entire letter, the reality of who we are and how we live. And who we are is simply this, children of our Heavenly Father, adopted into his family through the water of baptism.

 

So today we think about that language of adoption. It's a beautiful language. It actually perfectly encapsulates our identity in Christ.

 

Think for a moment about the power of a name. In the United States, to be born a Kennedy or a Clinton or a Bush, well that means something. It means some doors will open for you, others will be slammed in your face.

 

The children who bear those names go through life receiving both the rewards and the consequences for the things that their parents have done. Because the name that they bear means something. Apart from the adoption of baptism, our names are worthless.

 

My name is nothing but sin and death and failure. My name is unbelief, shame, and guilt. There are no great historic deeds attached to my family name that will somehow convince God that I'm worth associating with.

 

And what I need is not to find something so noteworthy that God will finally take note of the significance of my name. What I need is a new name. What I need is a new identity.

 

And that's what baptism does. It gives a new name. It gives the name of God himself.

 

That's what your baptism has done. Through the washing of water and the Word, you now bear the name of God. You are adopted into his family.

 

His life is your life. His holiness, his righteousness, his everything is yours because your identity is in his name and not your own. Nothing left for you to do to earn it.

 

It's already done. There's nothing the devil or the world or your sinful flesh can do to undo what God has done in baptism. They cannot void or challenge the adoption papers.

 

They cannot challenge for custody. You belong to the God who loves you. You are adopted into his family.

 

That's who you are now. And so Paul says, that's how we ought to live. Not because living in the reality of your new identity makes you somehow more adopted, as if that was possible, but because as a child of God, your Lord has nothing for you but gifts of love and mercy.

 

When Daddy Warbucks adopted little orphan Annie, his home became her home. She could swim and play and eat and live with him. Why would she want to go back to the hard-knock life at the orphanage? So also, you have been adopted into the family of God.

 

Why would we want to walk through life hand-in-hand with the sinful flesh? Why would we want to return to a path that leads only to death? It's not who we are anymore. Why would we want to live as if it was? Today's text drives us beautifully back to our baptism, to the identity that our Lord has given us there. You don't need me to tell you that life in this world is complicated.

 

The sinful flesh refuses to quit. Temptation lurks around every corner. The devil prowls around like a lion seeking someone to devour.

 

As children of God, we will have good days and bad days in our battle against these things. But our comfort is knowing that our success or our failure against the devil or the world or our sinful flesh in this momentary life, it's not ultimately what matters. What matters is the eternal name put upon you in your baptism.

 

You are a child of God. The eternal inheritance has been promised to you. So at the risk of oversimplifying, what Paul is basically encouraging us to do is simply do what we can to live each day as the redeemed children of God, walking not according to the flesh but according to the name of God, the spirit that has been given to us.

 

And at the end of each day, go to sleep in peace. Find your rest in the comfort and the certainty that your Lord's name gives you. You are adopted into his family.

 

His name is now your name too. He will guard you and he will defend you in his name and as his children through this life and into the life to come. In Jesus' name, Amen.

 

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Transcribed by TurboScribe. Go Unlimited

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father, through our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. And let us pray.

 

O Lord, send forth your word into our ears that it may bear fruit in our lives in Jesus' name. Amen. While the world around us might be taking it easy on a holiday weekend, our journey through Romans has brought us to the most hotly contested section of the entire epistle.

 

While we're not going to spend any time today describing the different ways that Christians understand Paul's words, if you are interested, there's hundreds of pages, hundreds of books, essays, articles, commentaries, all about the second half of Romans chapter 7. We're not just going to do a survey of that today. What we are going to do is continue what we have been doing for the last several weeks. Summarize what Paul has said to this point in the book of Romans, and look at what he adds in today's text, because in today's text, like in the ones before it, Paul gives us words of hope, words of confidence, words of comfort for the struggles that we face daily.

 

To get a sense of what Paul means in today's text, we don't have to go all the way back to Romans chapter 1, just the beginning of Romans chapter 6. There, in verses that are no doubt familiar to you, in a section on baptism, Paul said that the one who has died with Christ in baptism has been set free from sin. Or do you not know, he said, that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death, and if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. And we know, Paul says, 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.

 

For, Paul says, the one who has died has been set free from sin. What does that mean? What does it mean to be set free from sin? Well, it doesn't mean that we no longer sin on a daily basis. It doesn't mean we won't sin in our lives or in our vocations.

 

What it means is that we are set free from the condemnation for our sin. Sin will, of course, still be there, but the righteous God will not hold our sin against us. He will not see us according to our sin.

 

He will see us through baptism. He will see us through Christ. That's what Paul is saying.

 

In fact, the Greek word that's translated as set free in Romans 6 verse 7 is more literally translated as declared righteous. Your English Bible probably even has it in the footnotes. Paul uses a different word for freedom than he does throughout the rest of chapters 6 and 7. It's more better, it's more accurately translated, the one who has died has been declared righteous from sin.

 

Paul's drawing our attention to something different. The point he's making about baptism is not that the water will set us free from committing sins in our lives. He's talking about the declaration of God and how we ought to see ourselves.

 

The one who has died with Christ in baptism has been declared righteous from all his sin. And since you have already died with Christ in baptism, therefore you have been declared righteous from all your sin. So, Paul says, see yourselves that way and live your life that way.

 

Consider yourself dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. That word consider, the same word that Paul used when he was talking about Abraham. Abraham believed God and that was credited to him as righteous.

 

God considered Abraham righteous on account of Abraham's faith. Abraham was still a sinner, but God saw him as righteous. So also, Paul says, even though we are still sinners and we will still sin, we ought to see ourselves as righteous.

 

We should not roll over and let sin sit unopposed on the throne of our lives. We shouldn't let sin have any dominion over us because we're not under sin. We're not under the law.

 

We're under grace. And that's where chapter seven begins. Not only have you died to the lordship of sin in baptism, Paul says, but you've died to the lordship of the law of Moses.

 

We're not under the law any longer, we are under grace. Just like a marriage is legally voided once one spouse dies, so also in your baptism, you have died in Christ and are no longer married to the law. But remember, Paul says, when you were married to the law, the law's purpose was never to make you right with God.

 

In fact, treating the law as if that's what makes you right with God only increases sin. Using the law as a source of personal righteousness turns God's people into self-righteous Pharisees. That doesn't mean the law is bad.

 

No, it's the opposite of that. In fact, the law is so good that people's abuse of it ends up being the best evidence there is for the power of sin. If they give it like this, Paul says, apart from the law, sin lies dead.

 

Not literally dead, more like hibernating. Your sin is still there. It's still what separates us from our lord.

 

It's still what makes us enemies of God. But apart from the struggle to keep the law, sin doesn't have to work very hard. The one who is swimming with the current doesn't know how strong the current is.

 

It's the one swimming upstream who understands the force. And so also, the one who indulges temptation without a fight has no sense of the power of that temptation. But when God's good law comes in and gives me something good, something godly to strive after in my life, well, that's when sin gets itself into gear.

 

It uses God's good law as kind of a base camp from which to launch attacks. And in so doing, we begin to get a sense of just how strong, just how insurmountable the current of sin really is, and just how quickly it will pull us out into deep water. In chapter 6, Paul says that when we were slaves to sin, we were free from righteousness, if you can call that freedom.

 

He says something similar in chapter 7. He says that at one time, he lived apart from the law, at least apart from what the law was really given to do, if you can call that living. Ironically, Paul says it was in the fulfilling of the outward expectations of the law that he was living apart from the heart of the law. When Paul thought he was keeping himself right with God through the law, that's precisely when he was really living outside of it.

 

How many times did Jesus accuse the Pharisees of the same thing? Those whitewashed tombs who were polished, clean keepers of the law on the outside, but inwardly full of dead bones. So also, when Paul thought he was living under the law, he was actually living apart from it. Hindsight is 20-20, and in retrospect, Paul saw that he was trying to use the law to accomplish something the law could never do.

 

But when he finally realized that he could not make himself right with God by means of the law, that's when sin came alive, and used the righteous law to attack him all the more. Where Paul used to think he was blameless under the law, a Pharisee of none who was righteous. Not even one.

 

He realized that the law was given so that every mouth might be stopped. The whole world held accountable to God. Was it the good law that brought this death to Paul? Of course not.

 

It was sin. Sin grabbed onto that which was good and perverted it. And now the true nature of sin is seen for what it is, and the full goodness of the law is also revealed.

 

That's what sin continues to do. For while it remains true that all who have died with Christ in baptism have been declared righteous from their sin, it also remains true that in this life we remain in the sinful flesh. The true law of God is of the spirit.

 

We are of the flesh. Paul calls us prisoners of war, the sinful flesh having been taken captive and sold in slavery to sin. And so even though Paul considered himself dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus, and even though Paul would do what he could to not present his members in service to sin, the truth of his life remained that sin continued to be an ever-present reality in his actions.

 

It was frustrating for Paul. He knew what he wanted to do. He wanted to take his own advice from chapter 6, present his members to God as instruments for righteousness.

 

But he also knew that's not always what he did. And that's because even though he had been raised with Christ in baptism to walk in newness of life, he still lived in a sinful flesh this side of heaven. And nothing good dwells in us with regard to our flesh.

 

Yes, our new creation delights in the law of God, but our sinful flesh continues to wage war. And it's a distressing and exhausting and a wretched existence being the battleground for the ongoing war between the desires of a sinful flesh, the desires of a new creation. And who will deliver us from this daily struggle against a body that is destined for death? Well, Jesus will.

 

He already has. He's begun this deliverance in your baptism. And if Christ died for you while you were still his enemy, how much more, now that you're allies, will he save us from the struggle against sin on the last day? Even if we don't live in the fullness of it yet, we still consider ourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.

 

We continue to offer ourselves in service to God with our mind, even if in our flesh we still struggle against sin. And most importantly, we do not live in the fear of God's condemnation or wrath, for there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus through baptism. Paul is going to have a lot more to say about the Christian life in chapter 8, but notice how the message of chapters 6 and 7, and you'll see it in chapter 8, they all follow the same pattern.

 

Paul wants us to remember that our life is lived in what we call the time between the times, the now and the not yet. You are already, because of your baptism, already dead to sin and alive to God, to walk in newness of life. The problem is we don't see it yet.

 

It takes some effort to see ourselves the way that God says that we are. We are already dead to the law, dead to its demands, but we don't see it yet. And so we struggle against the sinful flesh, we struggle against this body of death until Jesus comes to set us free.

 

And as we'll see in the next few weeks through chapter 8, we are already free in Christ Jesus, because in Christ, God did what the law could not. But we don't see it yet. We still live in the midst of a suffering world, a fallen creation, and yet we know that the suffering of this life is not even worth comparing to the glory that's waiting to be revealed.

 

If God is for us, who can be against us? So perhaps the best thing we can take with us from today's text is simply the promise of hope, hope for the struggle. Life in this world will always include the battle with sin. And you know what? That's okay.

 

The battle doesn't define who we are. In fact, the battle shows us that there's something else at work in us. We don't just follow the current of our sinful flesh carried along by the whims of a sinful world.

 

We fight back, and when we fight back, we get dust in our face. But the great gift of our Lord is that he doesn't send us just deeper into our own hearts to see this truth. We have been united with our Lord in baptism.

 

He sees us as dead to sin and alive in him. He calls us to see ourselves that way too, and then he gives us means by which to do that. He brings us into this room where his servant stands in his stead and by his command to forgive our sins.

 

We are dead to sin and alive in him, and our Lord tells us. And he feeds us with the sacrament of this altar for the forgiveness of our sins, the strengthening of our faith. We are dead to sin and alive in him, and our Lord feeds it to us.

 

Gathered around the gifts of word and sacrament for the forgiveness of our sins, our Lord consistently, tirelessly, and eternally reminds us of who we are in him. Yes, the struggle is waiting for you when you leave this place. Temptation will come, and sin will come with it.

 

But that sin, that's not who you are. In Christ, in baptism, we are the people of God. We find our hope and our comfort in that as we wait for the life to come.

 

In Jesus' name, Amen.