Message Description

Kicking off a new series, Dr. Kurt Bjorklund looks at Romans 8 and how we can make the journey of our life less burdened by coming to Christ.

Message Notes & Study Guide

Message Transcript

A few years ago, I bought a couple of backpacking backpacks with the idea that I would start to take my sons on individual hiking trips that would be sometimes multiple day trips. And when we first started this, I began doing it and I hadn't done it before. And so, I didn't really know what I was doing. And we just started putting all kinds of gear in these backpacks that we thought we would need. And what I realized very quickly is that a lot of weight is not really fun to carry on long backpack hikes. In fact, I began to realize that when I was packing. I usually pack things I didn't need or bigger things than I needed. And when I would be out on the trail with one of my boys, I would much rather have less stuff than more stuff, and so anything that you got rid of would make the trip better generally and there was a sweet spot where you could get rid of too much stuff. But by and large, I almost never regretted taking something out of the bag and not taking it with us on the trip in order to have a lighter bag. Now, that is a really simple thing to say. But in life, there are a lot of things that we carry with us that if we could take them off, if we could set them aside, it would make our journey better.  

Jesus, at one point was talking with his disciples, and he said this, this is Matthew 11 verse 28 -30, he said this, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” So Jesus says this, he says, if you want to be less burdened, less heavy in your journey, then you can come to me, and I am gentle, and I will make your journey better because you will not be as weighed down with things. Now that sounds really easy, it sounds in a sense of people being able to say, well just come to Jesus and Jesus will make it better. And if you've tried to come to Jesus and say, God, here's my burden, you've probably at least at some point experienced some frustration where you've thought I tried to come to Jesus, and yet my load figuratively speaking feels just as heavy as it ever did. So how do I really come to Jesus and unburden myself so that I can walk through this life without all the weights of this world just weighing me down? Well, that's a question that we're going to explore for the next couple of weeks.  

We're going to begin a new series that we're calling Unburdened, and we're going to look at Romans chapter 8. It's one of the great chapters of the Bible, one of the greatest, many people would say. And it begins with this declaration that those who the spirit is set free, will be free indeed. And it ends or near the end with saying that we are conquerors, more than conquerors. In fact, the word that's used there in the original language is the word Nike, where Nike has taken their idea of a victor, a winner, but there's a compound to the word that means more than conquerors. In other words, you're a super conqueror. So, Romans 8 says, you've been set free, you are free indeed, and you are more than a conqueror. In other words, you can go through this life free, you don't have to be burdened, weighed down by all kinds of things. And yet we do go through life, often weighed down by all kinds of things.  

And so today as we begin this new series, we're going to begin by looking at Romans chapter 8 verses 1-4, you've heard it read. And it begins with this word therefore, and therefore is one of those words that when you encounter in the Bible, the way to think about is to say, stop and ask what is it there for it? Because here it points back to Romans 7, maybe to the whole argument of Romans. But Romans 7 in the immediate context was where Paul was saying, there are things that I do that I don't want to do, and the things that I want to do, I don't do, why do I still struggle with this sin? And there's a huge debate among scholars who write books on these kinds of things about whether Paul was speaking as a believer, a follower of Jesus, or if he was speaking about this in his pre-Christian experience. And we'll talk more about this next week about this argument and how it plays into the whole of Romans 8.  

My take is that he was speaking as a person of faith. And so, now he's talking about this idea of his battle with sin before he comes into this. And sin is one of those things that you've probably heard the word, and many of us have used the word in different ways. But let me just give you a definition. This is a definition from a man named Cornelius Plantinga, who wrote a book on sin a few years back. And he said this, "At the heart of sin is treating yourself as your own first cause and therefore treating God as your accessory."  

So many times, we think of sin as being a violation of some rule or standard and certainly it is that. But it's also significant to understand that the essence of sin isn't that you break some rule, but it's that you make yourself ultimate, that you make yourself your first cause, and God your accessory, that you say, I want everything in this world to work for my benefit, for my good, rather than for the good of God. And when we do that, then we're struggling with sin. And so, sin is a struggle. It's a lifelong struggle, even for a person who's a person of faith. And as we come into Romans 8, you'll see some of the debate about this, but Romans 8:1-4 really does this and that it teaches us this wonderful truth that there's no condemnation for a person who's in Christ Jesus. And then it invites us into this wonderful life, that is this life of freedom, because whom the spirit has set free will be free indeed. And that's what Romans 8 does, but here's the problem with this teaching of no condemnation, Romans 8:1, "There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus." And here's the problem, and that is, we have some resistance to this idea. It doesn't matter if you are a person who says I don't believe in Jesus or Christianity. A person who says I believed in it for a long time, maybe you've even believed it deeply for a long time, we still have some resistance to this.  

And so, I just want to point out these resistances and I think they are in each of the, the second, third and fourth verses. Here's the first one. And that is, our first resistance is that we look at this and we say this is too demanding to be healthy. And the reason I say this is because for many people, this whole notion of sin is problematic. They say, well, sin as a category, is destructive because it puts the world into these categories of people who are sinners and not sinners. And when somebody looks at other people as sinful, it creates all kinds of judgment, all kinds of difficulty in this world, and it's just not healthy to think in those terms.  

I remember watching a movie years ago, and the ultimate line or scene was when this lady looked at this guy she said, look, there isn't right and wrong in this world. There's just what we do and what we don't do. And it's a worldview. It's a worldview that movie was promoting, that was saying, in essence, look, stop worrying about right and wrong, just live your life, do what you're going to do. And that's all you have to think about. And for many people, they think the notion of saying there's a right and there's a wrong is an unhealthy concept. But here's what we see in verse 2, it says, "Because through Christ Jesus, the law of the Spirit, who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death." And what that's saying, in essence, when it talks about the law here, is it's saying that there is a law, and that the law of the Spirit is what sets you free. And again, we'll unpack this more in the days ahead, but I just want to focus here on this notion of law. Because some people again, will just say there's no need to say that there's any law or that there's any kind of version of a higher authority. You just look within your soul, look within your heart, and if you find in your heart what you want to believe or need to believe, then that will be sufficient. But what we need to understand is that actually having authority outside of us does bring health.  

Now, some people won't necessarily argue the idea that there's sin or a law. But what they'll do is they'll say, but the God that I know, the God that I worship, is the God of acceptance, and he accepts everybody. And it's based on a partial understanding of God that is true but doesn't go far enough. Because God accepts everybody doesn't mean that he accepts everything. And most people who would argue this don't even believe it, because if you were to say to them, was God okay, with two white men in Georgia, shooting a black man for running through their neighborhood because he was black, they would say, oh, no, God's not okay with that. And I would say, you're absolutely right. Or was God okay with the Holocaust? No, of course not. You see what we tend to do is we tend to look at the idea of God sometimes and we pick a part of God that we like. And so, we say, that's the part of God that I'm going to emphasize because it fits me. And so, a lot of us have a John 3:16 God, and we ignore the rest of the Bible. And what that means is that what we do is we say very simply, I believe that God loves the world, that He sent His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life. God is just a God of love. He just loves.  

But you know, there's another part of God that we see in the Bible as well. That's just as important in Romans chapter 1 that we see it maybe most clearly. In verse 18, it says, "For the wrath of God is revealed against all the unrighteousness and ungodliness of this world." Now that may seem harsh to some of us. But what that is, is its God's way of saying, I'm not okay with racism, whether it's a genocide of an entire race in the Holocaust or the isolated killing of somebody because of the color of their skin. In Georgia, I'm not okay with it. 

You see, there's this idea of God being holy, having a way in which things work best, and him having a righteous wrath at the things that aren't right. And his love that all comes together. And what this means is to really have a notion of who God is or what God is like a healthy notion, you have to see all of whom God is. It'd be a little bit like this. If somebody were to have come to your home in the last two months, and got a picture of you and all of your COVID glory, meaning the way that you dress, the way that you hung out, and the things that you did, and they were to say that's a picture of you, you'd probably say, oh, wait, wait a second, wait a second. That isn't all of me. Sometimes I put on jeans. Sometimes I put on better clothes. Sometimes I do my hair. I actually have gone to a hairstylist at some point, I have not recently but you know, I've actually done something that helps me look better. You would say, I'm both of those people. I'm the COVID person quarantining in my house in sweats for months on end, and I'm the person who dresses up. And that's true. And in order to understand who God is, we have to be able to see God on both sides and not simply say, I don't like the idea of a God who judges sin. Therefore, there's no need to have this idea of no condemnation because nobody's condemned, because there's either no standard, or the God that I worship accepts everybody.  

You see, the beauty of Romans 8:1 is that it helps us come to a point where we say, there's a God, who, despite our struggles with sinfulness, says there is now no condemnation for you if you are in Christ Jesus. And condemnation is the voice of Satan speaking into the life of the believer. Conviction is the voice of the Holy Spirit, either calling us to faith in Jesus Christ in the first place or speaking to us and calling us to something more once we've come to faith in Jesus Christ. So, there's this glorious truth, there's no condemnation, and sometimes we resist it because we think it's too demanding to be healthy. But sometimes we resist it because we think that it's too good to be true.  

This is the second kind of resistance that we have. And we see this in verse 3. It says, "For what the law was powerless to do because it was weakened by the flesh, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh to be a sin offering. And so, he condemned sin in the flesh." So here you have this simple statement. It says that what God did is that God sent His Son to be sin in the flesh that Jesus took on the punishment for sin. And so, the reason that there's no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus is because it's already been paid for. It would be like you going to the store and having somebody already have paid for your total shopping experience. And you do the curbside pickup and you try to pay. If the store took your money as well as the money of somebody else who paid for it before you got there, it would be unjust of them because what they would be doing is double collecting. And the punishment for sin has already been paid by Jesus Christ. And so, the idea of no condemnation means that you and I have no condemnation because Jesus has already paid for it. And this, if you really understand it, can feel almost too good to be true because it means that there's nothing in your past, and there's nothing that you can do in your future that will put you in a place of condemnation. 

Think about it, maybe like this. If you were to go to a little league game, I don't know if you remember little league, it's where kids get together and they go out and they play baseball with coaches and stuff. There used to be such a thing. And little league is one of those things where sometimes there are some funky rules to baseball. Normally, baseball has three outs, you can score as many runs as you can in an inning until you get three outs but sometimes in Little League, and they'll have a rule that will either say you can only score so many runs in an inning, or you can only go through the batting order once.  

So just imagine with me for a moment that you come upon a little league game, and it's the last inning. And the team that's batting is losing by so many runs, that they can't mathematically get enough kids to the plate with the rule of only going through the order once to score enough runs to win the game. And so, the manager looks at the situation and decides to put in a kid who has never pitched before. And he puts the kid in, and the kids starts to pitch. He walks the first batter, and he walks the second batter, and the third batter hits the ball hard, and a couple kids come home. And then he walks another batter, and he's getting frustrated feeling like, I'm going to blow this for my team. And the manager walks out and says look, just relax. We're going to win either way. Just do your best and forget about it. In a way that's a really simple goofy picture of this, but that's what it means to live without condemnation. It means that whatever has happened in the past, whatever might happen in the future, the victories already been won. That you don't have to say what will happen in my future if I blow this. That feels almost too good to be true.  

I heard a story about a man years ago when Rolls Royce was kind of the cream of cars, where a man had a car, and he was in Germany driving it, and it broke down. He called Rolls Royce and they flew a mechanic there from England, who came over, took a look at the car, and fixed it. He thought he was going to have this huge bill. And he didn't get a bill, and so finally he called the Rolls Royce office. And the person who talked to him said, yeah, we don't have any record of a Rolls Royce ever breaking down anywhere in the world. Sorry, we can't help you.  

You see, that's the way God looks at your record and my record if we're in Christ Jesus. What he's doing is he's saying it doesn't matter where you've been, what you've done, what you will do, your record is clean. That's what it means to have no condemnation. And if this doesn't move you it's because you're still clinging to this idea of saying, maybe I can be good enough, maybe God will appreciate what I've done. You see, what we want, is we want this feeling of we've done something that's commended us to God because there's a piece of us that feels like if I can bring something to the equation, then I have some self-respect. So almost like being invited to somebody's house, and they say don't bring anything, and you're like, no, no, I want to bring something, I want to contribute. There's a piece of us that wants to contribute. But no condemnation is hard for us to believe because sometimes we say it's too good to be true. Author J. I. Packer wrote about this once and he put it this way. He said, "There's a tremendous relief in knowing that his love for me is utterly realistic, based at every point on prior knowledge about the worst of me, so that no discovery can disillusion him about me in a way that I am so often disillusioned about myself."  

God knows the worst of you. He knows the decisions you've made that you wish you could take back. He knows the choices that you've made that you think nobody else knows about and you hope nobody else finds out about. And what that means is when you become disillusioned about yourself, meaning a little surprised or disappointed or shocked at the things you can do, that you can still say, but God has seen it all to the very bottom and there's still no condemnation. You see, so often what you and I will do is we will think, well, I'm not as good as I should be, or I haven't come as far as I should come. And yet to say that there's no condemnation means that God still knows and loves me, and he's still determined for my good.  

Now grace like this, the reason I say it's too good to be true sometimes, feels offensive to those who are self-righteous. It feels offensive to some because what they'll say is that Christianity lets in just about anybody. You see earlier when I said that some people will say, well, God accepts everyone, that is one of the beautiful truths because it's based on what Jesus does not on what we do, that there is no sense in which God says no to somebody based on their life. The only reason that God does not have somebody as part of this no condemnation group is because they say I don't need it. That's it. And that's why grace feels offensive. You see, ultimately the message of Christianity is not do great things for God, not get your act right so that God can accept you. It's God has done a big thing for you in Jesus Christ. He did what you can never do. When you and I get that it can change this burden that we feel of trying to perform.  

There's one other kind of reason that people resist this teaching and I see this in verse 4. And this is because they think it's too risky to be helpful. It says this, "...in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the flesh but according to the Spirit." You see, some people will hear this and they'll say, well, if it's true that there's no condemnation, and if you talk about grace, what will happen is some people will just choose to sin. They'll make their life about them. In fact, what some people will do is they'll stop trying, they'll just simply say because of what is taught here and how you teach it, then people will get a pass and they won't be intent on being people who live their lives in alignment with God's principles. John Stott wrote about this and here's what he said. He said, "We are set free from the law as a way of acceptance but obligated to keep it as a way of holiness. It is as a ground of justification that the law no longer binds us. But as a standard of conduct, the law is still binding, and we seek to fulfill it as we walk according to the Spirit."  

Now he's trying to summarize I think, this verse and what he's saying is that the reason that this isn't true is because at once we have acceptance. What we will do is we will then try to live according to the Spirit because we understand this. I mean if you've been married, you get this. Before you're married, you market yourself to your spouse, you do all you can to prove you're worthy, and then you get married. And to a certain extent, some of that goes away. But a good marriage still has a lot of effort. But it isn't with the sense of trying to prove yourself or maybe a better example is if you try out for a band or an orchestra. There's a tryout period. And when the trial period is done, you are in the band, you're in the band whether or not you continue to do well. But what happens is, often the band teacher or the band instructor will say, you know, I really love it when you play this really softly and well, and all of a sudden you're like, hey, I'm the kid who plays this well and so you try.  

Dallas Willard once put it like this. He said, "Grace is not opposed to effort. It's opposed to earning. Earning is an attitude. And effort is an action." In other words, when people object to this idea of there's no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, what they're objecting to is this idea of saying if we teach this and teach it in all its fullness, that says this isn't about what you and I do, that Jesus has met every requirement of God in heaven and in earth. You and I live in that reality, that we won't live enough for God. They don't understand how the Spirit of God works. Because Romans 8 is about this, the spiritual freedom, and it says that when you have acceptance, that now instead of feeling free to live according to the flesh, and we'll talk again about this word flesh, it means your earthly desires, your internal kind of desires, that you'll live according to the Spirit. That God will transform you and me. And that's how we get this freedom, this life that God calls us to.  

Now I started by talking about unpacking a bag, taking some of the burdens out of a bag. Here's what happens if you and I take the burden of condemnation out of our bag. And that is we begin to live without trying to perform for people or trying to earn God's acceptance. And we no longer feel the need to pretend. 

See, sometimes what happens in communities of faith where no condemnation isn't the bedrock, is that people will come, and they'll perform for one another. They'll try to act like things are all better than they are. And when somebody asks them how they're doing, instead of being able to say how they're really doing, what they'll do is they'll say, well, I'm doing great. Because they don't want anyone to know about the mistake that they made, or about the decision that they made, or about the hardship that they're having. But when you're in a community that says there's no condemnation, then what happens is you're able to say, here's exactly what's real. When you're in a life Group, a small group, you can say, here's what I'm struggling with. Here's where I failed in recent days. And when somebody comes to you and says, you are bad, and here's what you did wrong in life, maybe you don't get a lot of that. But if you get that from somebody, what you can say is you have no idea, it's worse than you think. And God has seen it to the very bottom, he's seen the worst of me, and his love for me is not conditioned on there might be something that might come out. There's no condemnation for you when you are in Christ Jesus. And you don't have to pretend. You don't have to perform. 

Now, here's the thing. Romans 8:1 says there is therefore no condemnation for, who? Those who are in Christ Jesus. Those who have come to a point not of praying some formulaic prayer, not of affirming a church creed, not of attending a church regularly, those who are in Christ Jesus to be in Christ Jesus, in this context, in the whole flow of the book of Romans, means that what you have come to realize is that you cannot, in your own effort appease God. But that instead you come to Jesus and let Jesus be your righteousness. Let him be your standing and your status. And when that's true of you, which is true when you say God, I'm a sinful person, and I need Jesus to be my Savior, then you can say there's now no condemnation. And you can take that package out of your bag and say, I'm setting that aside. I'm not going to live with the fear that I'm on try out and I'm never going to make the team, or that I'm dating, and I may never get married if I'm not a certain way. But instead, I'm living with full confidence of my standing, and therefore I can live without a burden.  

If you're participating this weekend, and you say, I don't know if I'm living without condemnation. Maybe today is a day that you can take a step into Jesus Christ, where you can say I'm in Christ Jesus. And the way you can do that is what we just said by simply right where you are saying, God, I'm, I'm a person who has at many times in my life made myself my first cause instead of you the first cause, and you've been my accessory. I've been sinful. And I want to trust what Jesus Christ has done on the cross on my behalf as a way to live without the fear of condemnation. Maybe you've been a believer for decades, but you've started to listen to the voice of accusation that says you are not enough. What I want to just encourage you to do is to say yes, I am not enough. But thankfully I don't have to be, Jesus has been enough. And live without the fear of condemnation. And take a step into this life where the where the sinful desires of your heart don't have full control in your life any longer. And that's when you'll find a relief from the burden and the fear of condemnation.  

God, we thank you for a chance just to gather today. And God we ask that you help us to live in an unburdened way when it comes to this fear of condemnation. And then because of it, we'd be able to live without performing or pretending but to live in the beauty and the freedom of a life that you have redeemed and purchased. And we pray this in Jesus name. Amen