PASTOR'S MESSAGE

 

Heirs with Christ

Romans 8:11-19 

            The famous catcher, Joe Garagiola, recalls the afternoon when he and Pirate pitcher Rip Sewell got involved in a brouhaha.  Sewell threw Garagiola into the Pirate dugout.  “Next thing I knew,” Joe says, “one Pirate had me by one leg, another Pirate had me by the other leg, and somebody was saying, ‘Make a wish.’”

            Perhaps that’s way you feel at times, dear friends – like life is yanking you this direction and that, trying to pull you apart.  Family issues are pulling you one way and concerns at work are pulling you another way, the demands of the world are yanking you one direction and your own personal wants and needs are yanking you another, and you don’t know if you can take it.  Well, St. Paul described a similar kind of struggle in our text for today.  Only he was talking about a spiritual battle – the struggle between the spirit and the flesh, the things of God and the things of our sinful nature, which keep pulling us back and forth.

            This is the way Paul put it in our text:  “IF YOU LIVE ACCORDING TO THE SINFUL NATURE, YOU WILL DIE; BUT IF BY THE SPIRIT YOU PUT TO DEATH THE MISDEEDS OF THE BODY, YOU WILL LIVE, BECAUSE THOSE WHO ARE LED BY THE SPIRIT OF GOD ARE SONS OF GOD.”  In other words, the Holy Spirit is trying to pull us closer to God.  But the unholy trinity – the devil, the world and our sinful nature are trying to pull us away from God.  And if we listen to them by gratifying the desires of our flesh, or placing ourselves in tempting situations, by neglecting our daily Bible reading time, or ignoring the voice of the Holy Spirit in Word and Sacrament, by running after the ways of the world, or trying to fit in with the ‘in’ crowd, then it will surely bring death to our soul.  It will pull us apart and destroy us.

            That’s why St. Paul encourages us to:  “PUT TO DEATH THE MISDEEDS OF THE BODY.”  That is, to crucify the old Adam.  Now, the word ‘misdeeds’ refers to habitual practices of the flesh that go against God’s Word, like gossiping about your neighbor, and taking God’s name in vain, holding a grudging against someone or withholding your forgiveness from them, giving into sexual immorality or addictions that hurt the body and soul.  Such misdeeds must be put to death, by rejecting and renouncing them in Jesus’ name the moment they pop into our minds; by praying for the Holy Spirit’s help to take every thought captive to the Word of Christ; and by using that Holy Word of God to strengthen us to resist temptation.  And when we stumble and fall, to immediately repent of our sin and ask Jesus for His forgiveness to make us clean.  In short, to return to the Lord.

            To take an example from nature:  every March 19 the swallows return to the Spanish mission in San Juan Capistrano, California, as they have done in the 215–year history of that mission.  They never fail.  Whether it be rain or sunshine, they come to the mission and are greeted with the peal of its bells.  The impeccable timing — on St. Joseph’s Day each year — of the cliff swallows’ arrival from their winter home, 6,000 miles south in Argentina, has puzzled scientists for years.

In the same way, you and I should daily return to the Lord in contrition and repentance for our sin.  Martin Luther in the very first of his 95 theses wrote:  “When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said, ‘Repent,’ He willed the entire life of believers to be one of repentance.”  To return to the Lord constantly all our life in humble sorrow over our sin, confessing to Him our guilt and shame, and receiving His sweet pardon and absolution – that is how we put to death the misdeeds of the body.  As a matter of fact, Paul says we have an ‘obligation’ to do that.  And the word he used is the word for a ‘debtor.’  We owe God an insurmountable debt, because He paid off our account in full and settled the score through Jesus’ saving blood.  And although we can never repay that debt, we owe Him our lives, we owe Him our thanks, by returning to Him in repentance and faith each day.

The only problem is that, unlike the swallows of San Juan Capistrano, our timing is frequently messed up.  Instead of returning to the Lord, we return to the sinful nature.  Instead of living by the Spirit, we live according to the flesh.  And as Paul indicates in our text, that presents a deadly danger:  “FOR IF YOU LIVE ACCORDING TO THE SINFUL NATURE, YOU WILL DIE!”  In fact, what the text literally says is:  “You MUST die!”  It brings to mind the words that God spoke to Adam and Eve, when He told them not to eat from the Tree of Knowledge.  He said:  “FOR IN THE DAY YOU EAT OF IT, YOU WILL SURELY DIE.”  That is the price we pay for eating from the forbidden fruit of sin – not only temporal death here on earth, but the death of the soul for all eternity in hell.  And the danger is, that if we keep on living in unconfessed sin, practicing the misdeeds of the body, we could lose our faith and salvation and pull ourselves away from God altogether!

            Fortunately for us, God rescued us from that deadly danger by sending His Son, Jesus Christ to pay the price we could not pay – His death on the cross, which cancelled out the bill of our sins, that blotted out all our dark misdeeds of the flesh, and lifted the price that was hanging over our head.  That’s why we daily need to look to the cross of Christ, for in the cross there is purification for all our guilt, remission of all our iniquities, and the removal of the curse.  For just as our salvation did not depend upon us, so our sanctification does not depend upon us.  It depends upon God and His grace.  For just as we were redeemed as a free gift of His undeserved love, so He keeps us in the faith by the free gift of His Holy Spirit, working in the Word, for the Holy Spirit is constantly pulling us back into God’s loving arms.

            That’s what Paul was getting at in our text, when he said that we did not receive a spirit that makes us a slave again to fear, but we received the Spirit of sonship.  You see, the word ‘sonship’ is actually the word for ‘adoption.’  And that’s what God did in our Baptism, when He brought us under the shelter of His heavenly roof, and make us His blood-bought children.  A woman once described her Baptismal conversion in this way:  “I dreamed I was in heaven.  On a great blackboard were written all my sins.  I was terribly ashamed.  But then God himself took an eraser, dipped it in water, and erased all the writing on the blackboard.  My sins were gone forever, washed away. That’s what happens to us when we become a child of God through Baptism into Christ.  No written record remains to accuse or shame us.  Our past is gone and we are God’s brand new children.”

            That is the comforting assurance of our adoption into God’s family by Baptism.  Now, in the ancient Roman world adoption indicated an intimate bond between the new parent and child, almost closer than blood relatives.  Professor Merivale put it this way:  “The process of legal adoption by which the chosen heir became entitled not only to the reversion of the property but to the civil status, to the burdens as well as the rights of the adoptor, became as it were, his other self, one with him.”  In other words, by Baptism and faith in Christ we are now one with the Heavenly Father, an intimate part of His heavenly family.  Which is why we can call Him, “Abba, Father.”  ‘Abba,’ of course, is Aramaic – Jesus’ mother tongue – the word by which a child normally addressed his father.  Amazingly enough, it’s the same word Jesus used to address His Father in the supreme crisis of His life, in the Garden of Gethsemane, when He prayed that the cup of suffering might pass Him by.   Well, dear friends, when we call upon God our Abba, Father in faith, for Jesus’ sake He lifts that cup of suffering from us.  The real suffering of sin, death and hell has passed us by.  For that is the promise we have in Baptism.

And we can know that beyond the shadow of a doubt, because as Paul said in our text:  “THE SPIRIT HIMSELF TESTIFIES WITH OUR SPIRIT THAT WE ARE GOD’S CHILDREN.  AND IF WE ARE CHILDREN, THEN WE ARE HEIRS!”  Simply put, God has placed His Holy Spirit in our hearts to testify that we are His children.  As a matter of fact, the word testify is the technical term for the signature of a witness on a legal document, making it binding and true.  Well, the Holy Spirit is the witness to our adoption.  He was sealed into our hearts at Baptism as proof that we belong to God.  Now, it stands to reason, that if we are God’s children, then we are also his heirs – coheirs with Jesus Christ our Savior.  It’s interesting that in Roman Law, adopted heirs received an equal inheritance with the natural born children – unlike Jewish law, where the firstborn always received a double portion of the inheritance.  That’s means that if we are coheirs with Christ, who is the firstborn, then we too get a double portion of the inheritance – the double blessing of forgiveness now and eternal life to come in heaven.  By Baptism and faith in Jesus Christ we get to inherit all the treasures of forgiveness, life and salvation.  And so, if we ever doubt our salvation, the Holy Spirit is right there to strengthen us in our faith and bring us the reassurance of our forgiveness!  And that’s what He does every time we hear His precious Word, or feast on His holy Supper, or remember our Baptism.

During World War II, when the Russians invaded Finland, their planes bombed a hospital that according to international law should have remained untouched; it was clearly marked with a huge red cross on its roof. Investigation, however, revealed that shortly before the attack snow had fallen and covered up the cross.  So while the cross could be seen, all inside the hospital were safe, but when it disappeared, many were killed.

There is a striking similarity there to our own spiritual lives.  As long as we are connected to the cross of Christ by Baptism and faith, we are safe for time and all eternity.  But when that Gospel truth becomes obscured, we are lost.  That’s why we need to daily renew our Baptism, through repentance and faith and return to the Lord and His Word.  For there alone do we find the comforting reassurance that we are heirs with Christ of His glory.  May the Holy Spirit strengthen and keep us in that saving faith all our days, as we daily put to death the sinful nature and live by the Spirit, for Jesus’ sake.  Amen.

     

                              

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