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Trinity Sunday
Light of Christ Anglican Church
The Rev. Michael Moffitt, May 27, 2018


We Reflect the Work of the Triune God


Text: Romans 8:12–17

This has been a very difficult week for us as a church. The death of our brother John Powers has once again reminded us that the death of our bodies is a part of our lives in the mortal flesh. It was made more difficult because we have lost four others in such a short period of time and we really are still grieving individually and as a church. Part of my prayers for us is that God will be our comforter, but also that we would be reminded that our hope is not set upon the here and now but upon the eternal kingdom which is our inheritance.

This is Trinity Sunday and as I focused on the texts from the lectionary for this week, it didn’t take but a moment before the Holy Spirit illuminated one Scripture section in particular. This morning we will briefly focus on Romans 8:13–17 and I believe that there is such great hope for us that it will ease the burden as we move forward in faith. Before we turn to those passages I want to go back several verses to set the context. Listen to Romans 8:9–11,

However, you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. But if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Him. 10 If Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, yet the spirit is alive because of righteousness. 11 But 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.

In verse 9 Paul is pointing out that the characteristic of every authentic believer is the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Paul taught in chapter 7 that the lot of the unbeliever is indwelling sin (7:17, 20). The privilege of the children of God is to have the Spirit’s presence to fight and subdue indwelling sin. Jesus had promised in John 14:17 that the Spirit would dwell with and within those who turned to him by faith. You will notice that the Spirit of God is also called the Spirit of Christ and to have the Spirit of Christ is to have Christ in us. This is not to confuse the persons of the Trinity by identifying the Father with the Son or the Son with the Spirit. Instead it is meant to emphasize that although they are eternally distinct, they share the same divine essence and will. They are inseparable and have been eternally. What the Father accomplishes he does through the Son and what the Son does he does through the Spirit. Wherever one is, the others are there as well.

This is so important for us to grasp as we deal with the effects of being encapsulated in our mortal bodies. As we grow older those mortal bodies continue to remind us that they are wearing out. Dr. Martin Lloyd Jones, a medical doctor as well as theologian, wrote in his commentary on Romans, “The moment we enter into this world and begin to live, we also begin to die. Your first breath is one of the last you will ever take...the principle of decay, leading to death is in every one of us.”

The hope of the gospel is that because of Christ death and resurrection we have been “made alive in the Spirit” and can now live into what we were made for. The Trinity works together in a collaborative effort to restore us to our original purpose and design. The ultimate destiny of our body is not death but resurrection and that is Paul’s point in verse 11,

But 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.

Our bodies have not yet been redeemed, but they will be one day and that is our hope and what we long for. How can we be sure about this? Because the Holy Spirit is not only the Spirit of life but the Spirit of the resurrection who first raised Jesus Christ from the dead. Paul’s conclusion is that this is how we know that he will give life to our mortal bodies. Jesus promised it and the Holy Spirit showed that he could do it by raising Jesus first. Paul wrote in Colossians 1:18, And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent.

Let’s now turn to Romans 8:13–15,

For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the flesh, you will live. For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. 15 For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!”

Often, I have heard people speak about having the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit as if it were a weapon that they could use in spiritual battle but that isn’t Paul’s point here. He doesn’t speak of the Holy Spirit as something we possess or use but the one whose indwelling presence leads us. When we are being led by the Spirit we are putting to death the deeds of the flesh and show that we know that what Jesus is offering is far better than what sin is offering. Sin offers us satisfaction but instead gives us guilt and shame, where the Spirit is offering us life, joy, and peace with God and that is precisely what we receive. The Holy Spirit confirms his presence when he leads us into war with our own sin.

John Piper in his book Desiring God writes,

The children of God hate sin. The children of God have the values and priorities and preferences and tastes of their Father. They are chips off the old block, as it were.

In our present culture when we speak of being at war with sin, it is seen as foolish because it is denying what our flesh hungers for. Many deny the fact of personal sin and reject that anyone has the right to set a standard that to them is arbitrary. Many today boldly proclaim that they have a right to live as they see fit but then shriek with rage when they are made to live with the consequences of their actions. To deny their rights is seen as bondage, oppressive, and narrow minded which for many is how they view Christianity and want nothing to do with it. Daily we see evidence all around of the damage and misery of giving in to whatever hungers and cravings the sinful flesh demands. Declaring God’s word as irrelevant and oppressive has brought down upon our nation a level of immorality, violence, and spiritual bondage that we would not have thought possible 25 years ago. The mental health community is overwhelmed with those who have severe depression and find themselves unable to cope with even the simplest tasks of life. They are given counseling and medication, which is fine and helpful, but it usually doesn’t address the real issue which is separation from God. Suicide among the young is happening at an alarming rate and drug addiction has become the rampant in every community. Why? Because many people feel no hope for the future and can’t see a reason to live.

A large majority of the western church has become anemic from allowing the culture of death to influence their message. They preach unity at all cost and embrace lifestyles and beliefs that promote humanistic values and perversions that emanates in the pits of Hell. They support abortion and call it good and a right of women. Their message of the social gospel is not real food but is like eating a picture of food or a Styrofoam likeness of food hoping to find nourishment. Without the life-giving impact of the Gospel message there is instead now a culture of death.

However, we can praise God that wherever there is the bold proclamation of His Holy Word there is a culture of life, and that is going on in spite of the demands of the culture. Glory be to God! Our passage in Romans 8 is calling us to be faithful to God and be involved in turning this around and focus on what it means to be led by the Spirit to mortify the deeds of the flesh. Paul is calling us to follow the Spirits leading and guidance because there we find life as it was intended and prove that we are truly sons and daughters of God. If we fail to follow the leading of the Holy Spirit, then we will find ourselves back in slavery to sin and fear.

There is no neutral ground here. Men will always follow after a spirit, the question becomes which spirit are you following, the Holy Spirit or the spirit of the anti-Christ? Paul taught that the mark of a child of God who is following the leading of the Spirit and putting to death the deeds of the flesh is they are released from the bondage and slavery that sin brings. There is no longer fear but the joy of being in relationship with God as those who have been adopted into the family of God. Instead of a spirit of slavery we receive the Spirit of sonship (adoption). The Spirit is given to us to confirm that a legal transaction has been carried out by the Father, and we are now legally sons and daughters of God.

F.F. Bruce says this about this term “adoption as sons” in the Roman world of Paul’s day:

In the Roman world of the first century an adopted son was a son deliberately chosen by his adoptive father to perpetuate his name and inherit his estate; he was in no way inferior in status to a son born in the ordinary course of nature and might well enjoy the father’s affection more fully and reproduce the father’s character more worthily. (Quoted in John Stott’s, Romans, Intervarsity Press, 1994, p 232)

Paul is encouraging the church to realize that Jesus’ death and resurrection had bought for them a relationship with the Father that they could not have ever expected. The Spirit within them was testifying to something never before heard of.

Jesus taught his disciples to pray what we call “The Lord’s Prayer” in Luke 11:2–4 and Matthew 6:9–13. He begins the prayers with the invitation to address the Father with the same familiarity as he did. “Our Father, who is Heaven, hallowed (Holy) is your name!” This would have been unthinkable to the Jews. They would have never presumed that level of intimacy with Yahweh. Paul, a former Pharisee of Pharisee’s would have bristled at the idea of this kind of intimacy and would have considered it blasphemous to suggest it. Now he wrote and spoke as one who had in Christ experienced this relationship and now was alluding to this same level of intimacy that Jesus was inviting his disciples into. He assures them that those who walk under the leading of the Holy Spirit and put to death the deeds of the flesh will be lead by the Spirit to cry out, “Abba Father!” Why? Because the Spirit bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God. What a new-found joy to those who have been in bondage to slavery and fear. When we are not following the guidance of the Spirit in declaring war on the sins of our flesh, our consciences are seared, and we instinctively fear that judgment is coming, and this produces a fear of God. However, when we are allowing the Holy Spirit to guide us in putting to death the deeds of the flesh, then the Spirit within us brings the certainty that we are the children of God and that causes a profound joy to rise up within us as we cry out “Abba” which in the Aramaic means “Daddy”. I used to love it when I arrived home from a long trip and as my truck pulled into the driveway my children would come bursting out the front door crying out with joy, “Dad’s home!”

However, there were times when they didn’t, and I would know that they were most likely in trouble with their mother and she had said, “Just wait until your father gets home.”

When we are not allowing the Holy Spirit to deal with issues that separate us from God we lose the joy and fulfillment of our relationship with him. However, Paul shows that the evidence that we are in right relationship with God is the Spirit will bear witness to the Fathers delight and will affirm within our spirit that we are indeed God’s children. Jewish law stated that by the mouth of two or three witnesses evidence was affirmed. When the witness of the Holy Spirit speaks to our spirit that we are children of God there is no further reason to doubt, no matter what the enemy whispers in our ears. It isn’t that we never sin but that when we do we are quick to come to God in repentance because we long to be restored to right relationship with him.

What is offered is a real, present experience of divine love, not just a future event. the Holy Spirit works in us to realize now that we have the love of the Father and that is our motivation to allow the Holy Spirit to guide us into truth and repentance of sin.

Two weeks ago, John Powers met with the prayer intercessors and talked with us about the joy that he had in the relationship he had found in Christ and in the presence of the Holy Spirit. He marveled at how God had moved in and through him through the ministry of Light of Christ and through his relationship with Kairos. He didn’t want to die because he wanted to continue with what God had given him to do. He understood that this life had much sorrow and trials and he acknowledged that he had experienced many, but he could face them because of the inner witness of the Holy Spirit in his life. He wanted more and more of that joy in his life. God invited him into the fulness of that joy last Thursday night at 8 pm. It wasn’t what John was asking for when he came to us for prayer because he wanted more time here. That was his only real frame of reference. However, Paul points us to a more wonderful reality in Romans 8:17, and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may be glorified with him.

The promise that Paul has alluded to in this section is that because we have been adopted into the family of God, that adoption means that we are co-heirs with Jesus. We inherit the kingdom of God and all the blessings and glory associated with that. We will share in an eternity of the fulness of God’s presence, which is something that right now we have no concept of. We have nothing in our experience that prepares us to even remotely understand all that is offered to us in Christ.

Sometimes I have heard new believers express that they decided to follow Christ as a way of escaping the fires of Hell and there is some sense to that, but as we walk with him here and now it doesn’t take long for us to adore him and hunger for more and more of him. Paul is teaching us that we will inherit what Jesus inherits as the perfect Son and we will be glorified with him. Again, we can only imagine what that will be like.

The thing is because we have been adopted into the family of God, so we also inherit the enemies of God as his family. While we are here we can expect that the kingdom of darkness will do all that it can to deter us from bringing glory to God as we work to build the kingdom of God.

One of the most common ways that he stops people is by keeping them focused on everything else but building the kingdom of God and making them satisfied with their relationship with God right where it is. I have heard it said that the sign that you are doing what God is calling you to do is that you are meeting strong resistance. In war the enemy will spend his time and resources attacking the army that is advancing not the one who is entrenched and safe back at the base. Paul is making it clear that if we are following the guidance of the Holy Spirit and confronting the sin that ensnares us, then we become a threat to the enemy and will suffer the effects of warfare.

Jesus promised his disciples in John 15:18–20,

“If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. 19 If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. 20 Remember the word that I said to you: ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they kept my word, they will also keep yours.”

The Apostle Paul told the Galatians, From now on let no one cause me trouble for I bear on my body the marks of Jesus (Galatians 6:17). Paul was a warrior in the kingdom of God and he had the scars to show for it, but he still continued to fight because he was fighting for his family’s honor and glory and for the love of the Father and his elder brother Jesus. He found that if he fought in the power of the Holy Spirit and the authority given to him by Jesus, then he would win but never without suffering.

As a church, we have been commissioned by the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit to be the light that dispels the darkness and we have been given all the resources of our Father’s kingdom so that we can accomplish that task. It will come with a price, but one well worth paying. It’s a joyous and honorable task that has a wonderful payoff—we inherit the kingdom.

In addition to remembering the role of the Trinity in our lives we are also remembering our fallen heroes on Memorial Day. I believe that as Christians we honor those who have given their lives in battle that we might enjoy freedom. We also should remember those who have gone before us in the faith and were willing to suffer and die that the kingdom of God would advance.

Today we also remember our brother John who fought the good fight, ran the race and persevered to the end. Let us be those who follow in the footsteps of those faithful witnesses who have gone before us. Glory be to God!

Let’s pray.

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