Turn in your Bibles to the Book of Romans chapter 8 of Romans. It's on page 11-18 of the Bible that You might want to pull out from under a chair if you don't have your own 1118 Romans chapter 8. I'm beginning a new series of sermons today as we approach the Easter season and this series is entitled Finding Easter in your basket of disappointment The reason that I chose that title for my series this Easter is that It is obvious to us that a lot of us are going through period of disappointment Of course as Brad Jankowski mentioned earlier. It's economic disappointment for most of us But there are things that are happening about us that are far deeper than economic There are people in our church who are suffering in some deep ways in some severe ways and Some of you have faced disappointments that are hard for you to even talk about and so I was thinking okay We're talking about Easter is coming up to the season in which we rejoice and we talk about the Resurrection of Christ but to find Easter in your basket of disappointment is probably what many of you are having to do because Around you is a lot of sadness around you is a lot of trial and yet Somewhere in there somewhere hiding in amidst the disappointment is the good news about Easter and so for the next six weeks We're actually going to study one chapter of the Bible Romans 8 It's one of my favorite. I bet it's a big favorite chapter of a lot of you in the Bible and we're going to take Romans chapter 8 and march through it for the next six weeks Peace by peace bit by bit Every week. I want to show you something else. You'll find this Easter season I'm going to call the whole series sort of like finding the joys of Romans 8 In the midst of disappointment and today what I hope you'll find with me is the joy of Justification you might not know what that means, but hopefully by the end of this sermon You will understand what justification is all about Romans a chapter 8. I'm going to read verses 1 through 4 Listen carefully to God's word Therefore says the Apostle Paul there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus Because through Christ Jesus the law of the spirit of life Set me free from the law of sin and death for what the law was powerless to do In that it was weakened by the sinful nature God did by sending his own son in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering And so he condemned sin in sinful man in order that the righteous requirements of the law might be fully met in us Who do not live according to the sinful nature but according to the spirit? May God open his word to our hearts and our hearts to his word I remember the day I was sitting in my office when a fellow named Jim came to talk to me This was in a different church. So don't try to figure out who Jim is But Jim came to talk to me one afternoon and I Could tell the lines of anguish on his face told a pretty sad story whatever he was going through and Jim sort of sank in the chair in my office and looked at me and he said Mike I Can't do it I cannot live the Christian life I've tried and I can't and I asked him Jim. Why what's wrong? What's going on? And Jim said I cannot beat this guilty conscience Jim went on to tell me a long story of repeated failures to live up to the standards that he had for himself the things that he believed in He told me about his lack of love for his wife The harsh way that he had often treated his daughter His failure to be a man of prayer his poor discipline when it came to finances and A number of other things that he was worried about and then as Jim started to break down He said to me Mike The worst thing about it all is that sometimes I feel nothing towards God In fact, Jim told me I feel like sometimes I hate God I Know all the theology I know what the Bible says I even believe that Jesus died on the cross for me But what I feel in my heart is that I just don't measure up Mike I cannot do it. I'm a failure. I Just can't do it anymore My friend Jim death spurtly needed to hear God tell him not guilty and Maybe you do too So what I want to do this morning is talk to you about guilt and What to do about it? So let's begin with some definitions. We need to understand what we're talking about first guilt is both an objective condition and a subjective feeling and Sometimes the two may not exactly line up to each other Let me explain what I mean first of all guilt is an objective condition Guilt in other words when we look at it objectively means that you have violated a legitimate standard of some sort an Example would be driving faster than the speed limit or lying to your friend or cheating on your English midterm or something like that Now whether you feel bad about one or more of those things Doesn't matter because the fact is that you've broken a legitimate rule or a law or a commandment of God But then there's guilt as a subjective feeling too not only the objective fact It's an emotion as well. For example, you may have forgotten your wife's birthday So now you're guilty of breaking the rule that says you must remember your wife's birthday and on top of it You feel really guilty about it and she's going to make sure you do Right But this is where things get tricky see both an objective condition and a subjective feeling is what we're often talk about when we're talking about guilt But this is where things get tricky because sometimes the two things don't correspond In other words the feeling of guilt may not line up with the fact of guilt Some people for instance tend not to feel guilty when they should and At other times people feel guilty when they shouldn't you get it? For example, Jesus in the sermon on the mount talked extensively about anger and he said that anger when it's not justified Express toward another person when you call somebody a fool When you use the word raaka, which basically means you're a nobody when you think or say or do something like that to another person Jesus said you're guilty of breaking the sixth commandment against murder Now millions of people thoughtlessly break that commandment all the time. I Have you have two and yet don't feel a tinge of guilt? See, that's where these two things are not corresponding and by the same token I know people who wake up every bad every morning feeling guilty and they can't tell you why Some of you perhaps feel guilty for doing things that really aren't wrong But you have this free-floating type of of Chronic guilt feelings upon you and shame almost all the time my friend Jim for instance felt chronically guilty and I had to Sort of walk him through his story and help him let go of some of his guilty feelings But then again, we need to remember that not all guilt feelings are bad In fact if we have done something wrong, we should feel guilty, right? guilt feelings motivate us to make restitution in some cases or Admit the mistake that we've made or tell the truth or confess our sins to God In those cases our guilt feelings are what we Christians often call conviction I might say I feel convicted that I don't love well or I may say I am under conviction about my lack of prayer And what I really mean is that I'm feeling guilty about something in my life and those feelings of conviction Motivate me hopefully to ask God to give me grace and make some changes so conviction is a good thing But here's the problem. What if What if even after you've made restitution or admitted your mistake or confessed your sin you continue to wrestle with guilt feelings? What do you do about that? What do you say to that stubborn accusing finger of your guilty conscience and? Many of you struggle with that a lot some of you are eaten alive by it What do you do about that? Well, I know what you should not do Let me tell you at least five things that I've learned personally that don't work in struggling with guilt The first thing that you should not do when you're trying to overcome guilt is Blame shift or rationalize your way away from the guilt Blame shifting and rationalizing in other words if I were to say I'm this way because of my parents That would be this mistake or I can't help being an angry person Besides I have the gift of exhortation Have you ever met people who justify their sin by a spiritual gift? There are such people That's blame shifting. It's rationalizing a second way of dealing with guilt. It's not right. It's through control or trying to become a perfectionist You might say I'll never do that again. Why I'm gonna kick that habit just like I've kicked every other habit in my life I will control my environment so that I deal with guilt and get it away from me. Doesn't work. Third way escape Escape I'll escape my guilt. I'll drink it away Somebody might say Or I'll just look at one more internet site Or I'll TV it away. I'll watch some more TV You know, I wonder how much of the entertainment industry is fueled by a desire to escape one's guilty conscience A fourth way that you might be surprised about in not dealing with guilt correctly is through religion That's right religion can for many people be a way to deal with guilt Somebody might say I'll prove to God that deep down on really a good person and so they are very fastidious about their religious practices And they think internally if I do this enough and jump through that hoop and attend church and give and pray and work hard and serve maybe just maybe I'll begin to feel better about myself and so this religion approach tends to be just simply a form of penance and then finally and sadly sadly too a way of Trying to deal with guilt is through utter despair Somebody might say like my friend Jim did that day I Give up I Give up I Can't do it Friends none of these tactics works very well at all Each one of them only dulls the senses or delays the effects of guilt for a little while But then guilt comes roaring back like a like a fierce ugly rot wiler Thinking it's fangs in us again and ultimately in the case of despair for a whole lot of people the only way out Is suicide? Is there a better way? Absolutely Absolutely, there's a better way you deal with guilt just like you deal with every other problem that you face you believe the gospel Here at university we believe that believing the gospel is the way we deal with our sins and deal with our problems We believe the gospel and the gospel is well summarized for us in Romans 8 verse 1 Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus what an amazing Bible verse I know many of you would consider that verse one of your favorites in all the Bible It's one of the most encouraging verses in scriptures one of the most comforting and Consoling verses in all of the scripture. What does it mean? Let's take it apart this morning. What does Romans 8 1 mean? Let me tell you three things that it seems to me Romans 8 1 means First of all, it means that at one time you were under God's condemnation In other words at one time you stood before God as a guilty center condemned by the demands of his law According to the book of Romans you can read through the Romans and you'll see this You were guilty both by birth as a descendant of Adam As well as by choice you have repeatedly and willfully sin throughout your life and at one time when you were apart from Jesus Christ You were under God's condemnation in fact as it says in Romans 323 all of us have sinned and fall short of the glory of God right all of us Romans Three I'm sorry that was 323 Romans 3 10 says there is no one righteous not even one of us And if you and I were to die in our sins we would have no hope of forgiveness or of heaven Romans 14 10 says that we will all stand before the judgment seat of Christ Romans 14 6 23 rather says that the wages of sin is death and So the bottom line here is that apart from Jesus Christ not a one of us could escape the verdict of guilty on judgment day not one Now let me just stop and pause right here and speak to you if you're a skeptic We might have somebody here today saying gee. I I've heard this before sounds very You know preachy. I don't know that I buy into this So you're a skeptic and I'd like to just address you just for a moment before we move on to the next point I suspect what you're thinking is Hold up right here Mike. You can't tell me that I'm guilty of sin I don't believe in God Or the Bible or the 10 commandments. These are the standards to which you say we're going to be compared One day, but I don't accept those for myself and it's not right that God would judge me by things that I don't even believe in and besides You might say I'm a good person basically. I'm not guilty Well a guy named Francis Schaeffer some of you might know that name He lived and he died a number of years ago He was a theologian a preacher a pastor an author wrote a book called the finished work of Christ a Number of years ago, and in that book he gives an illustration that I'd like to borrow to speak to anybody who thinks that well you can reject The standards that God has given and still hope that you might be considered a good person So let's talk through his illustration He says that you should imagine that on the day you were born An invisible tape recorder was hung around your neck Your little baby in the nursery and an invisible tape recorder is hung around your neck and it's a very special tape recorder It doesn't record everything you say it just records some of the things that you say it records every single time that you Past a moral judgment on someone else or criticized or condemned Somebody else for something in their behavior or their attitude. It also records every time you said or thought you ought To someone else or you should to someone else So that's this tape recorder and imagine if you will on judgment day that you're standing before God If you could at least grant that that's a possibility you're standing before God and you tell him It's judgment day. You say look. I've never believed the Bible I don't believe the Ten Commandments and frankly I didn't even believe in you until right now And God will say that's okay That's okay. You will find that I'm the fairest judge Imaginable I won't judge you by the Ten Commandments. You didn't believe in those I won't judge you by the Bible. You didn't accept the Bible as God's word and I won't even judge you by Jesus Because you didn't even accept him as as God's son And so that's okay. I won't judge you by those things I'll just turn on this tape recorder and let you listen to your own words. I'll let you judge yourself Imagine that every time you said you ought and you should God will simply hold you to the same standards to which you held other people Every time you passed a moral judgment on somebody or criticize someone or found fault in someone because of their behavior or their attitude You will condemn yourself Because you likely did the same or similar things See the point is of this illustration that nobody will be able to stand on judgment day because we've all broken our own rules We've all violated our own criteria, right of what makes a person a good person Jesus put it this way in Matthew 7 verse 2 He said in the same way that you judge others You will be judged and with the measure you use it will be measured to you in other words We're all guilty Every single one of us we don't need God to tell us that our own words tell us that we are guilty So that's the first thing we learned from Romans 8 one at one point in your life you were and hopefully you're not still But you if you're in Christ today at one point in your life you were under God's condemnation Let's move on to the good news The other thing that the second thing that we see in Romans 8 verse 1 is that God has done something about that problem God has done something to change your position of guilt before him It says in Romans 8 1 there is now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus So what is this saying? What is this verse saying about God's giving you a new position towards your guilt three things Let me tell you what they are and then we'll look at them one at a time you are forgiven You are free and third you are faultless Forgiven free faultless. Let's look at each one first this verse teaches You're no longer under God's condemnation means that you're forgiven completely forgiven eternally forgiven permanently forgiven The word condemnation speaks of judgment or punishment and Those things will never happen to people who are in Christ Judgment won't happen condemnation punishment won't happen For those who are in Christ Jesus because it's already taken place see when Christ died on the cross He paid the penalty for every sin that you've ever committed in the past for every sin that you're going to commit the rest of this day And for every sin that you will commit the rest of your life It's like this to use just a Silly illustration if you get pulled over by a highway patrol officer and he tickets you for speeding and You don't know what the fine is so you go home and call a highway patrol department and say how much do I owe and they say oh Sir you have already paid your bill somebody's paid it for you. You are free of that It's like that only much more glorious because Jesus Christ paid for every debt you ever owed and ever will owe Through the blood of Jesus God has forgiven you of sins known and unknown Sins felt and unfelt sins confessed and not confessed Sins remembered and not remembered sins of omission sins of commission Sins of the past sins of the present sins of the future in great six. I was in love with joy led well She was this hot blonde chick in sixth grade And I had a crush on joy led well and She was in a different class for me and we would see each other in the hallway as our classes changed rooms and back then of course we didn't text each other or email we wrote love letters in Longhand and so I was sitting in Mrs. Collins class I hope the blood of Jesus can cover the sins of Mrs. Collins. I'm pretty sure it can But I was sitting in Mrs. Collins class and I was writing joy a love letter and when the classes changed I folded it up And I walked out in the hall our lines passed by each other and I handed my note out But it fell right down at the feet of Mrs. Collins She picked it up Opened it up took it in her next class and read it out loud and It was the mushyest gushiest love letter. This one was My gold ribbon love letter and she told me Mike Osborne You must go to the principal's office and I went to the principal's office and there it was my love letter was in his lap And he looked at it and he said Osborne. This is going on your permanent record and I was shaking in my boots Because I didn't know what a permanent record was, but it sounded really bad And I want you to know that was the last time I ever went to the principal's office because I had this awful fear Waking up in the middle of the night that somewhere somebody is going to open this thing called a permanent record and there is my love letter
friends Believe it or not No believe it Your permanent record is clean
Your permanent record It's clean When God opens it on judgment day there will not be a mark against you because your sins have been wiped out by the blood of Christ
That's one thing it means you're forgiven You're free too See you're much more than just forgiven You know a lot of people think the Christian life is just that as good as great as it is A lot of people think that being a Christian means I'm forgiven of my sins That's great, but it's a lot more than that being forgiven means you just have a clean record But look at what else it means it means that you are free Verse two of our text says through Christ Jesus the law of the spirit of life Set me free from the law of sin and death now follow me here for a few moments if you're trusting in Christ today What this means that you're free is that you are both free from and Free to and it's important they hear both sides of this coin You are free from something, but also you're free to something you're free from the law as a means of gaining acceptance by God You're free from the law as a means of getting God's love See Christianity is not a performance-based religion That's one of the things that makes it unique from the rest of the religions of the world you check out those other religions All of them all of them without exception somehow boil down to performance You get God or whoever the deity is to love you to favor you to forgive you by doing this and that and the other By going here traveling by praying by that by kneeling whatever you name it It's all performance-based not so with Christianity God accepts you not because of anything you do But because of what Jesus Christ did for you in living for you dying for you and rising again for you But also not only are you free from the law as a means of it Being your ticket to heaven as it were you're also free to Something verse two says that you have a new power coursing through your veins as a follower of Christ you have the law of the spirit of life at work within you do you see that? You're not only free from the law of sin and death You now have the law of the spirit of life within you and that power which Paul calls a law Enables you as it says at the end of verse four To live not according to the sinful nature, but according to the spirit in other words The Holy Spirit enables and it innervates you to be able to live a godly life Another way of putting this is to say that you are now free to obey God's law not because you have to but because you want to You want to glorify a God? You know who loves you so much. I've told you before about my football coach in high school coach love Oddly enough that was his name and he was true to that name We wanted to please this man because we knew how proud he was of us He was such an exceptional coach because he motivated by love and grace not by fear of punishment and by law And that's the way it is with God We want to work hard for a God who has set us free from a slavish fear of punishment and has said I love you whether you succeed or fail Christians are free from the law as a way of earning God's love and free to obey the law with gladness That's freedom But not only are we forgiven and free third place we are faultless. That's what Romans eight teaches eight one teaches We are faultless and by that I mean that you are counted by God as righteous Remember I said earlier you're not just forgiven because forgiven means that you're Your your bad deeds have been washed away But in their place you have now been given the very righteousness of Christ That's why I say you are faultless look at verses three and four These are extremely important verses and I want to walk through them with you Verse three says for what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the sinful nature God did by sending his own son in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering and So he condemned sin in sinful man verse four in order that the righteous requirements of the law might be fully met in us Now let's break that down a little bit verse three says That the law was powerless to do something What was the law powerless to do it was powerless to make you a holy person? See you can't just read the law and it give you holiness automatically It doesn't work that way the law shows you your sin the law tells you what God wants from you the law points you to Jesus Christ But the law just the bear reading of the law the understanding of the law doesn't make you Change it doesn't make you holy or accept a little acceptable to God not because there's something wrong with the law But because there's something wrong with you and me We are sinful and that's where the thing breaks down So God took matters into his own hands He loved you so much that God sent his son Jesus Christ into this world as a real live human being Jesus Christ lived the life We should have lived died the death that we should have died in other words He became our sin offering it says that in verse three and because Jesus lived the life We should have lived and died the death that we should have died God condemned sin According to verse three again, that is what God did was he passed a judicial sentence on your sin As Jesus Christ was hanging there on the cross God the Father did an amazing thing He imputed your sin to Christ and what that means is that he treated Christ the way you deserved to be treated he looked at his own son and What he saw when he imputed your sins to him was he saw your failures your lies your screw-ups You're hatred of other people your selfishness your adulteries your jealousies and all of your other sins He saw them on Jesus Christ and when he saw them he pronounced him guilty and God the Father poured the full cup of his wrath on God the Son the wrath that you and I deserve to have and then he turned his back on his son And refused to deliver him from the punishment of our sin in that way God condemned sin in the flesh that is in the flesh of his own son Jesus and then Don't lose me here. Then something even more dramatic happened God imputed to you the righteousness of Christ That is he treated you the way Jesus deserved to be treated He saw you quote unquote in Christ He placed you in his son Surrounded you with the righteous robe of Christ himself and when he looked at you What did he see? He saw Christ's obedience Christ's good works Christ's faith Christ's submission Christ's love and when he saw it he said not guilty Not guilty God reconvened you as the righteous one and Christ as the sinner in That way According to verse four the righteous requirement of the law was fully met in you. There's a word for this justification You might not have ever heard that word before but now you know what it means to be justified is the opposite of To be condemned both our legal terms To condemn means to declare guilty To justify means to declare not guilty So verse one where it says there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus could just as easily be translated Now therefore there is justification for those who are in Christ Jesus on the cross God punished sin but gave grace to the sinner How many more ways must I put it before we get it through our thick skulls? God is both the just and the justifier of those who have faith in Jesus Believer the guilt of your sin has been removed from you God looks upon you and beams with pride and joy Some of you might have been smart enough to get on your diploma summa cum laude with highest praise When God sees his child he beams and says summa cum laude on you with highest praise There could be no more degree of righteousness than you have now He could not be more pleased with you than he is this moment or the very first moment you ever trusted in Christ Where once you were guilty and worthy of punishment now you are righteous in the eyes of God Where once there was only God's wrath now there is God's loving welcome and embrace Where once you were lost and without hope now you are found now you are treasured now you are safe in the heart of a god Who is your father god acquits the guilty he justifies the ungodly that's the gospel Can you believe it? Do you believe it? If you do you can sing that him we sang earlier or rise my soul or rise Shake off your guilty fears the bleeding sacrifice in your my behalf appears before the throne my surety stands My name is written upon his hands That's what it means Romans eight one But I told you that there are three things that I wanted to say There is a catch Yes, there is a catch The catch is that you must be one of those in verse one who are in Christ Jesus All of these promises all of these privileges are predicated upon your connection with God by faith in Jesus Christ
and so If I'm talking this morning to anybody who has never actually said yes to Jesus Christ You've never taken a moment to say to God lord. I'm a sinner and I need to be forgiven I need to become your child. I want you to Bring me into your family if you've never said something similar to that to God Is there any good reason why you shouldn't do that today
Can you honestly say that you'd rather go on living feeling guilty and ashamed and Uncertain about your eternal destiny Rather than being forgiven and free and fallous Is there any good reason why you this afternoon should not find a time in a place alone and talk to God and go through it and say God make me yours So admit your sin believe on Christ commit your life to him And if you are a Christian and yet you struggle and I know many of you do and so do I You struggle with stubborn feelings of guilt Here's what I want you to do preach the gospel to yourself every day If need be preach it to yourself every single moment remember those three words that I gave you forgiven free Faltless and recall them to your mind when you see that old rot wilder of guilt coming your way and believe the gospel that there is now No condemnation for you who are in Christ Jesus A few weeks after I spoke to Jim in my office that day I remember he came back he came back to see me And this time instead of those lines of anguish there was a lightness about him His face told me that there was something else going on in his life something better And he sat down on my chair and he said Mike I read the most amazing Bible verse. It's Romans 8.1. Have you ever read it? He said This is what it says Mike. It says therefore there is now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus Mike I believe that verse. I believe I'm justified By grace through faith in Jesus Christ I took my guilt to the cross and left it there
Let's pray Father it is amazing That we who were once your enemies Are now your friends through your loving grace toward us It is truly Mind-blowing that we who once were in bondage to sin and self are now forgiven free And faultless Thank you And Lord I pray we pray that if there's a soul here today that does not rejoice at knowing that That you will open the eyes of his heart and draw that person into this wonderful grace That lets him go free and we pray this in Jesus name. Amen