Romans
8:14-17
14 For all who are led by the
Spirit of God are children of God. 15 For you did not receive a spirit of
slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption.
When we cry, "Abba! Father!" 16 it is that very Spirit bearing
witness with our spirit that we are children of God, 17 and if children, then
heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ—if, in fact, we suffer with him
so that we may also be glorified with him.
How can you tell if someone is a Christian? Seriously, I
wonder what criteria you use to determine if someone is a follower of Christ.
Can you tell by the clothes they wear? Can you tell someone is a Christian if
he tucks his shirttail in his pants, if his hair doesn’t touch his ears, if she
wears skirts below her knees with sensible shoes, if their t-shirts say things
like “Jesus is my homeboy?” Can you determine if someone is a Christian by the
bumper stickers on their car, those with stickers that say things like “Jesus
Saves,” “God is my co-pilot,” or those that show their endorsement for a
particular political party being the obvious Jesus followers? Can you spot a
Christian by the way they talk? Do they abstain from “cussing,” opting rather
to use euphemisms and speak in coded “Chritianese”? Can you determine if
someone is a genuine follower of Christ by their record of church attendance,
the number of Bible verses they’ve memorized, the things they post of Facebook,
the amount of money they give to a church or charity? Can you spot a Christian by
the way he or she is “blessed” with material comforts and an all-around happy
life, or is the answer found in the kind of music they listen to and the number
of times you see them with a Bible tucked under their arm? I wonder…how can you
tell?
Well, in the text before us, the Apostle Paul gives us a
rather ambiguous suggestion: “all who are led by the Spirit of God are
children of God.” So there you go; if you want to know how to tell who
is and who isn’t a Christian—or as Paul says “children of God”—all you have to do
is make sure he or she is “led by the Spirit of God.” Alright. Sermon’s over.
Let us pray…
Well, if you’re like me, that doesn’t quite settle such
an inquiry, does it? I mean, really it just leads to another question: what
does it mean to be “led by the Spirit of God?” Now, before you begin to chime
in in your internal monologues about how being led by the Spirit means you do
this or that and you don’t do this or that and you read your Bible and you
pray…I think such a question deserves our serious attention, most especially if
we believe that we are “children
of God”—if you believe
you are “led by the Spirit.” After all, to simply assume that being led by the
Spirit is akin to following an exercise program or obeying a list of rules and
regulations is to make the mistake of those scribes and Pharisees of Jesus’
day. So, still this refined question lingers a bit longer: what does it mean to
be “led by the Spirit of God”
To be honest, on this Pentecost
Sunday, I wish Paul would just lay it out their plain for us. I wish it was
more obvious, like a smack in the face, a clap of thunder, or maybe something
like, I don’t know, the sound of a rushing wind and tongues of fire coming down
out of heaven, but being led by the Spirit of God doesn’t always work like
that. In fact, what happened at Pentecost seems to be the exception rather than
the rule. It seems so often we’re like Elijah, waiting, hoping to hear the
voice of God, to see the Spirit light up the way before us like a heavenly
highway of holiness, but instead we’re made to wrestle with the “sound of sheer
silence.”[1]
Paul’s words aren’t much help in the way of highlighting clear answers.
He does, however, give us a bit of insight into what being led by the Spirit of
God doesn’t look like: “For you did not receive a
spirit of slavery to fall back into fear.” The Spirit of God is not a
spirit of fear. The Spirit of God does not cause us to tremble in the face of
affliction; she is not a Spirit that leads us into the defensive stances of
those who fear the loss of a world in which their comfort and peace were so
securely kept. No, the Spirit of God is not a spirit of slavery, keeping us
locked in some twisted relationship founded in fear, in the threats of
judgement, punishment, and pain. To be led by the Spirit of God is to be led in
freedom, freedom from fear, from defensiveness, from the threats of those who
attempt to make you feel less holy, less righteous than them, from the
judgement of false religions and legalism. The Spirit of God is not a “spirit of slavery to [cause you
to] fall back into fear.” No, the Spirit of God is a Spirit of
adoption, a Spirit which draws us into the divine relationship of Father, Son,
and Holy Spirit.
Paul says, “When we cry,
‘Abba! Father!’ it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we
are children of God.” This Spirit of adoption—the Holy Spirit—shows itself through
us when we cry out in prayer, in distress, in joy, in celebration, in
heartache, in our grief to God. This crying out to God, however, is not simply
some last-ditch effort in securing safety, nor is it some bargaining chip or
attempt to show one’s own righteousness in shouting out God’s name at every
opportunity in hopes that it might actually work! No, Paul is sure to use the
Hebrew word “Abba,” even though it may be a bit redundant as it means “father,”
but this is the word Jesus himself used to address God, a word that was
transmitted in its original language through ancient Greek and Latin texts and
even survives in our modern English texts because of the weight of its meaning,
its deeply personal, relational meaning. Paul says, “When we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’ it
is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of
God,” because when those who are led by the Spirit of God cry out to
God—to Abba—it is because they know
God; they cry out to God as an injured child cries for his “Dada.”
This crying out
to God isn’t some religious after-thought, some attempt to invoke the holy in
order to get one’s way. No, this is crying out to the God whose steadfast love
(hesed) for us is so deep and
unyielding that we cry out trusting God is there in the first place! It is a
cry of trust, that God is our God and we are God’s children and, as Paul goes
on to say, “if [we are] children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with
Christ.” We share in the wondrous bond with Jesus! As children of God, we share in the great,
eternal relationship that exists between the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—it is
the very Spirit that draws us into that relationship! We are “heirs
of God and joint heirs with Christ,” and for an awful lot of folks,
those words are about getting something, about being included in the will as
benefactors of some heavenly fortune in the afterlife. For them, being heirs
with Christ is all about what they’ll get when it’s all over, about what God is
going to give them when they step through the pearly gates, but the words of
our text this morning, the words of the Apostle Paul in Holy Scripture, do not
halt here with these words about being joint heirs with Christ.
Paul continues
in verse 17: “if [we are] children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with
Christ—if, in fact, we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with
him.” Suffer? Me, a child of God, suffer? But I thought we weren’t
“given a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear.” I thought being a child of
God meant I’d be through with all of this suffering business, that I’d be
through with all this negativity, that my pains and trials would be all gone,
that my worries and doubts would be wiped away by my faith and a red-letter
bible, that if I just pray enough, go to church enough, hang out with the right
kind of people, if I just did everything I’m supposed to do and none of the
things I’m not, if I’d make a stand against the wrong things and a show about
the right things, if I’d just “let go and let God,” then I wouldn’t have to
suffer. Yet here’s Paul, telling me—telling us—that we’ll be children of God,
led by the Spirit of God, heirs with Christ—“if, in fact, we suffer with him so that we
may also be glorified with him.” So then, does that answer our first
question? How can you tell if someone is a Christian? Is it because they
suffer?
Now, before we
go down a road that leads to self-mutilation, understand this: yes, children of
God are not exempt from suffering, but why
do they suffer? You see, when we are driven by a spirit of enslavement to fear,
our suffering is of our own making; it is a result of our anxiety about a world
spinning out of our control;
it is a result of our fear—our fears about those things different from us,
those things we don’t quite understand, those things that cause us to have to
think, to change, to grow. When we are driven by a spirit of enslavement, our
suffering comes from our fear and that suffering and fear become and end unto
itself. As children of God, heirs with Christ, we have not been given such a
spirit. No, we have been given a Spirit of adoption, a Spirit of freedom from
fear.
As children of
God, indwelt with the Spirit of adoption, we suffer with Christ, which means we suffer as Christ suffered, and
such suffering is not of our own making. It is from outside of ourselves, the
result of living selflessly in a world obsessed with self and its manifestations
of power, comfort, greed, intolerance, and hatred. As children of God, we join
in Christ’s suffering as we seek to live lives that confront the “powers that
be,” those who abuse the name of God for their own gain. We join with Jesus in
his suffering as we refuse to ignore those on the margins of our society, as we
refuse to overlook those who are of no direct benefit to us, as we reject the
notion that in order to be a “good Christian” is to be quiet and fall in line
with those in places of power who might otherwise cause us harm. When we join
with Jesus is proclaiming the kingdom of God among us, when we join with Jesus
in feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, welcoming the stranger, loving the
sinners—we will suffer as Jesus suffered, because those with the power to
inflict suffering will aim their threats at those whose very lives are turning
the world right-side-up. We will suffer with Christ as we suffer with those he
came to save. We will suffer with Christ as we stand up to injustice and hatred
in this world, as we seek to bring God’s kingdom on earth as it is in heaven,
because the truth is, there are an awful lot of folks who don’t want heaven on
earth, because that would mean they’d have to share it with “those people.”
On this
Pentecost Sunday, we have received a Spirit of adoption, the Holy Spirit of
God, and that Spirit brings us into the divine relationship; it calls us to
join with Jesus in his suffering because we know that such suffering is not an
end unto itself. No! The suffering of Christ, the suffering we share with
Jesus, the suffering we remember as we share in the Lord’s Supper this morning,
is not the end! It is the way
to glory! It is the path that leads to more and more of God’s kingdom breaking
into this world! We have received a spirit of adoption, freeing us from fear,
liberating us with love—liberating us to
love, to love without fear even though it will lead to suffering, yet we trust
that such suffering is not the end and is in fact the path towards glory and
the full reality of being children of God in God’s kingdom. Praise be to God! Amen!
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