April 2, 2017 Free At Last by Pastor Josh Sheldon

I'll turn your Bibles please to Romans chapter 7. Romans chapter 7.

I've been going through this book for some time. We've come now to this chapter and the first six verses will be our text for this morning's preaching.

Romans 7 verses 1 through 6. Or do you not know brothers, for I'm speaking to those who know the law, that the law is binding on a person only as long as he lives.

Thus a married woman is bound by law to her husband while he lives. But if her husband dies she's released from the law of marriage.

Accordingly she will be called an adulteress if she lives with another man while her husband is alive. But if her husband dies she is free from that law and if she marries another man she is not an adulteress.

Likewise, my brothers, you also have died to the law through the body of Christ so that you may belong to another, to him who has been raised from the dead, in order that we may bear fruit to God.

For while we're living in the flesh, our sinful passions aroused by the law were at work in our members to bear fruit for death.

But now we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive, so that we serve not under the old written code, but in the new life of the

Spirit. May God bless us as we read, proclaim, and hear God's Word.

You know in the movie The Shawshank Redemption there's a character named Brooks Hatlin and he's released from prison after having spent most of his adult life there.

And once free, he finds himself bewildered by this world that he is freed to.

There are cars all over the place and cars when he went to prison were a novelty. It's noisy, it's smelly, there's buildings where there shouldn't be any, there are boulevards where there were only trails when he had gone away.

And he finds it noisy and confusing and in a sense terrifying and he finds himself lost, he finds himself confused and he also finds after all those years of confinement he had no taste at all for freedom.

There's another character that's later released also having spent most of his adult life behind bars and he also found freedom a very difficult thing to transition into.

He found it hard to even use the restroom without permission after so many years of being constrained in everything he did.

You see freedom, freedom can actually be a very scary thing. To have the shackles torn loose and to be set on your own, it can be a very scary, frightening thing.

For some of us it's actually terrifying, if we're honest. To have the rules taken away, to have the daily schedule removed.

We're told you can do this, now you're on your own, you are free. The Pharisees of Jesus' day, which is why

I had Dale Reed from Luke 18, that well -known incident where this young rich ruler, as he's called, goes and he asks a good teacher, what must

I do to attain eternal life? Of course he comes away sad because he had abundant riches that he couldn't give up, but Jesus has said more to him than just give up your wealth, more than just give up your wealth.

And perhaps this was the harder part. And come, follow me, abandon your own effort to becoming righteous before God.

What must I do? Jesus says, how do you understand this? Do you know the law? The rule keeping, that's what he thought he must do.

Jesus says, no, no. Come, follow me. Is follow me just a couple of words, or does

Jesus mean to abandon your self -reliance? Abandon your hope in the rule keeping, in your own efforts to attain that for which you've just asked me.

How do I attain eternal life? Follow me. And it seems to me to be implicit in there, follow me and stop following you.

Stop following your own efforts. He'd been raised with the rules, do this and God will be pleased with you.

Do that and he will become angry with you. All these I've kept for my youth.

He had been a law keeper. He was a wealthy law keeper at that. His exertion to gaining God's good graces had been his hope, and Jesus sweeps them away.

And God willing, this morning we sweep them away again if those remain in you. This idea of rule following, law keeping, effort.

All these I've kept. Jesus says, follow me because all else is vain, all else is futile, all else is ultimately damning.

Jesus, not the rules. Faith, not works. Grace, not law.

He called him to freedom and he declined. Paul calls the church to freedom.

I beg you to accept. If you are in Christ, the

Apostle says in Romans chapter 7, if you are in Christ, you have died to the law and you are therefore free to be bound to another, to him who is raised from the dead, to Jesus Christ.

If you this day are in Jesus Christ, your hope, your trust, your faith is in him and his cross.

You've died to that law and you are free, released from it to be bound to him.

It's a very important text for us this morning. Do you not know brothers? Do you not know?

And of course, implicit in the way he asked that, of course you know this. You know this, don't you? Do you not know brothers?

There's a question that Paul knows is just bursting to get out at this point.

And by at this point, I mean his argument throughout this book of Romans. For you who are visiting with us, we've been in this book.

We started at chapter 1, verse 1 some time ago. And this has been building. Paul's been hammering this point.

And there's a question that Paul from experience knows is just dying to get out of these men.

And Paul addresses himself here specifically to those who know the law. I speak to you who know the law.

Now as exclusively Jewish as that sounds, he means Jew and Gentile. Chapter 6, verse 14,

Paul wrote, for you're not under the law but under grace. That cannot be Jews only. If you are a

Christian, regardless of what religious background you came to Christ from, regardless of what ethnicity you are, what your social economic status is, or your educational accomplishments are, all of us in Christ are not under the law but under grace.

And he then gives an extended exposition in that chapter of the dominance of sin that it has or better had in our lives.

But now this question that he knows is just dying to get out. And it comes from those of us hearers who are knowledgeable of the law.

Or do you not know brothers, for I speak to those who know the law. It's something like this.

How are we to keep from sinning? Or keep others from sinning?

How are we to do this, Paul, without the law? You've taken the rules away.

What do we have in their place? You see if this message this morning is for those among us who hold on to this idea that I need to have the rules.

I need a checklist. I'm gonna put it up on my wall at home. And here it is

Wednesday, April 2nd. I don't care what it is.

It says this day I'm going to do this thing. The day I am not taking the Lord's name in vain.

Today I'm going to love my wife. Today I'm going to obey my parent. Today I'm going to give alms.

And when I get home at the end of the day I'm gonna check, check, check, check. Got enough checks, God's pleased.

Not enough checks, I better get on my knees and repent. This is for those of us who have any of that kind of an attitude in ourselves.

That our Christian life, our good standing with God, our righteousness, as Dale read to you from Deuteronomy, this shall be our righteousness is vested in this idea that I am going to keep the rules.

I'm going to check the checklist. And at the end of the day, I'm gonna show

God my report card and the number of checks I have and I'll be good. You've died to the law.

You've died to that checklist. If you know the law, then you have to be aware that the law has limits.

All laws have limits, don't they? The law can only bind you. It can only constrain you.

It's only applicable to you when? While you live. While you live. And we can go on, we can parse this out in more detail.

Canadian law is not binding upon us here in America. That's not what we're talking about. The idea though is there are limitations to the law.

Its authority over you is not without some constraints to its extent. Now if this seems too obvious to you, if I'm stating something that seems so basic that it doesn't even need to be stated,

I need to plead that Paul's pen is moved by the Holy Spirit and that he, God, he is the one who says that this verse will stand in Scripture, that we need to hear this.

The law binds you only as long as you are alive to be bound.

Binds is actually a little bit of a weak word for this. The New English translation, the

Net Bible, just in a very quick survey I did, I didn't look at every translation out there, but just a quick look, the

Net Bible is the only one gets it right. It says the law is Lord over a person as long as he lives.

The word Lord is kuri -e -o. Excuse me. Let me try that again.

Lord is the Greek word kuri -e -o. Kuri -e -o. It's the same word that we had back in chapter 6 verse 9.

Death no longer has dominion over Christ, is no longer Lord over Christ after his resurrection.

Chapter 6 verse 16 speaking to us, sin will no longer have dominion, mastery, lordship over you.

And here in chapter 7 verse 1, the Lord has lordship, it has mastery, it has authority, it constrains you.

How long? As long as you live. As long as you live.

The example in verses 2 and 3 is really pretty simple. It's pretty plain. One thing we cannot do, it won't make sense if we try to make an allegory out of it, as many do try to do, because if you make an allegory out of it, then when we apply it in chapter 4, it has to have a one -to -one correspondence, and it's not going to.

He's using a principle to illustrate a point, and then he applies this point to this idea of the wife whose husband dies to us and the law.

And so there's no one -to -one correspondence. We'll talk about that in a few moments. But just remember that the idea of the husband and the wife and him dying and she being free, it's a principle, not an allegory.

The first part of that verse, verse 2, marriage is binding, it's a binding covenant only while both are alive.

Does that seem obvious to you? I mean when we do weddings, when we've presided at a wedding, what do we say?

I promise to love, honor, obey, respect, cherish, those sorts of words. And what does the presiding pastor say at the end?

As long as you both shall live. That's point one from his example.

Marriage is binding only as long as you're alive. And the second point, the second half of verse 2, if the husband dies, she's released from the law of marriage because she's no longer married.

Now, does that seem too simple to you? Does this have you kind of in the back of your mind going, no, duh, we can all get that.

It's almost, I don't know if we still have these books in school. What I learned to read,

I think it was in first grade, maybe even kindergarten, I can't quite remember that long ago. It was that book, say, see dick run.

Run dick run. See spot jump. Jump spot jump. See the ball bounce.

Ball bounce. That sort of thing. It's almost that simple here, and it needs to be. Because we try to find ways around it.

We spoke about that last week, didn't we? Always looking for an out, always trying to over complicate things.

And Paul's saying, slow down here. Is this simple? If the husband dies, the wife is free from that law.

See dick run. Run dick run. Don't make it any more complicated than that. Verse 3 says that because her husband is dead, she's free from the law of marriage.

She can now bind herself to another husband. It wouldn't be adultery. It wouldn't be wrong, and it's not required.

She is, in every sense of the word, free. And she's released.

That's in chapter 7 of verse 2. She's released from that law. And that'll come up again in verse 6, this word released.

And it's actually originally, it's a very strong word in the original language. It means to cause the release of someone from an obligation.

One has nothing more to do with it. They are discharged. They're released.

The previous authority, whatever it was, is made of no effect. Now Paul uses this word quite a

I'm only going to give you three examples. Three, if you think that Paul wrote Hebrews. Two, if you don't think that, but it doesn't really matter.

Hebrews chapter 2 verse 14. Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood,

Jesus himself likewise partook of these same things, that through death he might destroy.

There's our word. This one I know I can pronounce. It's kartageo. He might destroy the one who has power of death.

That is the devil. Ephesians chapter 2 verse 15. Speaking again of Christ and his work on the cross.

Abolishing, this is our word, abolishing the law of commandments and ordinances that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace.

I'm going to spend just a moment on Ephesians chapter 2 verse 15. What is he speaking of here? He's speaking of the wall that divided

Jew and Gentile, with the wall that was the commandments that defined the

Jews as Jews, the law from Sinai. Abolished by Christ so that in himself he might make the two into one, so making peace between the two.

And at what point can we resurrect this non -peaceful thing between Jew and Gentile and split them up again?

No, it's been abolished, it's been taken away, kartageo, released. 2nd

Corinthians chapter 3 verses 7 through 9. Now if the ministry of death carved in letters on stone came with such glory that the

Israelites could not gaze at Moses' face because of its glory, which was being brought to an end, there's our word again, brought to an end, will not the ministry of the

Spirit have even more glory? You see whatever is the subject of this word, and here in Romans 7 it's the law, whatever is the subject of this word, the wall of division between Jew and Gentile, the destruction of the devil and his works, the ministry of death carved in stone, whatever it may be, it is decisively, it is permanently taken away.

Its influence and most especially its authority is ended because its purposes are complete.

Think of Paul's immediate example on marriage. What is the purpose of the law of marriage?

It's to define and regulate the conduct of a husband and a wife. Now if the husband dies, and this principle applies equally to a husband whose wife dies, but if that happens, which part of the law of marriage now constrains her?

Which part? And the class said, none.

No part of it applies anymore. She has no husband. The surviving spouse is not without law.

They are free from that particular law. So verse 3 tells us if she's married to another, she's not an adulteress.

There's no husband against whom to commit adultery. Is that simple?

That's pretty simple. See Dick run. Run Dick run. See spot jump. Jump spot jump.

Now do you sort of think when you hear that, just how dull of wit does he think we are?

And of course it's not me, because I'm just reading to you what the Scripture says. How dull does he think my mind really is?

How hard does he think this is gonna be for me to get? He being Paul, the Apostle who wrote this? That's a good question.

If you're thinking that, I suggest you ponder that. Ponder that while you walk on the way, while you're on your break at work.

Think about that question. While the kids take naps, if they ever do take a nap, stop and meditate on this.

The application to the wife at the end of the verse 3, you see, then becomes the application to all of us in verse 4.

This principle of the wife whose husband dies is very important. It's not just see Dick run, run

Dick run. There's a crucial truth here. We read the end of verse 3 in the first part of verse 4.

If she marries another man, she is not an adulteress. Likewise, my brothers, likewise, you who know the

Lord Jesus Christ, in just the same way, the church, you who have repented of your sin and fled to Jesus Christ in hoping only in his cross and sought there

God's forgiveness for your sins. That's who he's speaking to. Likewise, my brothers, you also have died to the law through the body of Christ so that you may belong to another.

In just the same way as the wife whose husband dies is free from that law of marriage and if she goes to another, another husband, is not an adulteress, she has freedom to do so.

In just the same way, you've died to the law and that through Christ and now you may freely belong to another because the one to whom you belong is gone.

Now the law here is obviously the Mosaic law. The body of Christ is Jesus' death on the cross.

It is by means of that death that we have died to the law through Jesus Christ.

Chapter 5 of Romans is where we learned how Jesus represented his people when he paid for their sins on the cross.

We were in that sense in him. That was chapter 5, that was some time ago.

But the idea is that he represented the people whom God intended to benefit from the cross that he suffered and were in him and when he paid that penalty, when he suffered death, the death that we should have had because of our sins, that we died in him.

That that penal death is attributed to you if your faith is in him.

In that sense, you died to the law because you died in him. He suffered the penalty that the law exacted.

The penalty was attributed to us because by federal headship Jesus had us in him. It's all very important because that is how you die to the law.

It's just what he wrote about us and sin in chapter 6 verse 2. How can we who died to sin still live in it?

How can we who died to sin still live in it? If we died to it, then it's no longer our ruling principle.

That's what chapter 6 verse 14 said. As sin is no longer lording it over us in just the same way, the law has been defanged.

Now we don't want to confuse the matter. As I said before, taking the first couple of verses as an allegory and then insisting that they have corresponding points one -to -one in the application of verse 4.

Because what happens is it can get very, very confusing. In the principle that Paul lays out first with the husband and the wife, the wife is alive but it's the husband who dies, and then he applies it to us, but we're the one who died and the one to whom we're attached, the law is still there.

That's what I've warned us about, that one -to -one correspondence just isn't there. It's not meant to be. The marriage law is used as a principle, and then it works perfectly, as we might expect.

If you're not in Christ, if your faith is not in Him and what

He did on the cross, then I have to tell you that then in that case the law is still your curio, your

Lord, your master, your authority. It still lords over you. You are responsible to God for the righteousness that it demands.

That was the end of the reading from Deuteronomy. Our obedience to the law will be our righteousness.

If you're not in Christ, that's what you're responsible for. The entire law, every jot and tittle, as James says, if you stumble at one point, you may as well have violated every point.

If you're not in Christ and you deny the lordship of the law, then according to the marriage principle in the first couple of verses, you're an adulterer because according to the principle of the law of marriage, you have not been released from that law.

You're still under the law. For you who have faith in Jesus Christ, consider this.

The principle delineated by the law of marriage still applies. You look at the end of verse 4.

This is the purpose for which we died through the body, the death of Jesus Christ, so that you may belong to another, to him who was raised from the dead.

Now if Paul uses the marriage principle there and brings adultery in as even an idea, then the idea is that unless you're released from the law and you go to another, you're an adulterer.

You need to be released from that law, judicially, by God. And this, of course, as you're hearing, is by faith in Christ.

This is the purpose for this, to belong to him, the one raised from the dead, Jesus Christ. Just as the widow is then free to remarry because her husband died, so also you are free to be joined to Christ because you've died to the law, no longer bound to it.

Now Paul doesn't say you're actually free to choose. He says that God's purpose in having his son represent us on the cross is so that you may belong to another.

You are free to be joined, but the word is in the passive. And so we could actually even say you're free for God to have joined you to him because he took you out from this other lordship, this other responsibility you had.

Until death do us part, yes, you died to it. And therefore

God can rightly join you to Christ. There is no choice in the matter, really.

If you died to Christ, you died to sin. You can no longer continue in it. In just the same way, if you died with Christ, you died to the law.

You can continue in that no longer either. We're going to speak later in another message, not today, another message about the use of the law, capital

L, in the Christian's life. And I don't want to today because that's not

Paul's point in chapter 7 verses 1 through 6 of Romans. Here he is driving and driving and driving us away from any hope in achieving the righteousness of God by any means other than faith in Christ and the righteousness of God that he, that Jesus, accomplished on our behalf.

Paul is driving us away. It's like a cowboy with a lasso and pulling the animal into line.

Get away from this idea that you can do this on your own. Trust Christ in the righteousness that he accomplished and revealed and is.

Give up on your self -effort. Why does he use the marriage law as a principle?

I think it applies like this. As a wife, as an adulteress, she lives with someone other than her husband, and of course that works the other way around, the husband against the wife.

If that one is still living and you go off with another, obviously you're an adulterer or an adulteress, clearly breaking the law of God.

In that same way, so also is the Christian guilty of the same thing if he or she wanders back to the law as a means of accomplishing what

Christ accomplished. He is your righteousness.

He satisfied the law for you. To run back to the law, which is really in essence running back to myself and my own goodness, which isn't there, my own righteousness, which doesn't exist, is spiritual adultery.

Christ is your righteousness. He alone. The last few words of verse 4, so that you may bear fruit to God.

This is the purpose. So that you may be joined to Christ. Why are you joined to Christ? So you may bear fruit to God.

It's pretty simple stuff. Run, Dick, run. Let's start at the basics here.

Godly fruit, the produce of lives conducted for God's glory by faith in Christ in the power of the

Holy Spirit is a very Trinitarian doctrine here. As such, fruit is not obedience to the law.

It's not obedience to the law. The place of the law in the Christian's life comes up later.

And I will not touch it until it comes up as we go through this book. But the fruit that Paul speaks of is not obedience to the law.

What is obedience to law? That's my own effort. That's my own striving. That's me with my checklist.

I'm going off to work on Tuesday and today I will show respect to my boss. When I come home today, I'm going to put that check there and show it to God.

That's not the fruit Paul's talking about. Godly fruit is

Galatians 5 .22. Love, joy, peace, long -suffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self -control.

And how does Paul say all of this is? How do we say that this is me as a

Christian? Because I obeyed a precept? No. Because I check something off on my list for the day of good things

I'm going to do that are holy and right? No. By the Spirit of God.

It's the fruit of the Spirit, not fruit of the flesh. It's the result of following the ways of Christ in the power of the

Spirit, not relying on our strength, which is nil.

All this Galatians 5 .22, bearing fruit to God. Chapter 7 verse 4, impossible by the works of the law.

Only by the Spirit can this be done. And that shows what verses 5 and 6 tell us in chapter 7 of Romans, verses 5 and 6.

Look again at that. For while we were note the past tense, were.

While we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions aroused by the law were, again past tense, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death.

To be in the flesh means to live under the dominance of the law. And what does the law do?

It stimulates our sin. Now there's nothing at all wrong with the law. Romans chapter 7 verses 7 through 12,

God willing we'll get to that next week, but that section, those verses are actually a defense of the law.

Nothing wrong with the law. Life in the flesh is life lived under the law's demands and the fruit, the result is death.

For the wages of sin, sin being just what the law produces in us, the wages of sin is death.

Now that's why there needs to be a change in masters. There needs to be a change in dominance in our lives, in the authority to which we go.

A new curio. Now a lot of this is going to be repeated in Romans chapter 8.

This idea of new life in the Spirit and what it means to walk in the Spirit and not depend upon the works of the flesh.

And I'm just gonna borrow one verse this morning from that. I'm gonna let the rest of that wait. Romans chapter 8 verse 3, for if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the

Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. What is the flesh?

The flesh is any means of coming before God other than Christ. Specifically here in Romans 7, what is the

Apostle Paul's concern? It's the law coming to Christ, coming to God, satisfying what

Christ did, but doing it on our own by obedience, by compliance with that body of law.

The righteousness of God and righteousness in this context is equated with salvation, is revealed in the gospel.

It is the gospel that finally relieves us from the striving, from the effort, from the struggle, from the never -ceasing fear of failure that the law produces in us.

Is this you? This striving one? This one who

Paul is trying to point out to you? I'm trying to make clear to you? You've died to that, and with the law, all the effort towards it.

Gone. Remember how strong that word is. You are released from it. For so many of us, the gospel spoke right to this tendency, our need to make ourselves right, specifically before God.

Romans chapter 1 says that knowledge of God is throughout all creation, and that knowledge of him is implanted in every one of us.

It says that God's wrath is revealed from heaven, and only with constant strain is this knowledge suppressed.

We know there's a God whose holiness we have corrupted and we've impugned. We know from the knowledge of eternity planted by God in every soul that his wrath is rightful and must be satisfied.

What do we do? We try, and we try, and we try, and then what happens? We fail, and we fail, and we fail, and then we hear

God's law. Then we hear God's law, the very one that the prophets held up to Israel time and again to show them their sin, and we say, not with our mouths, but implicitly within ourselves, we say something like, oh thank goodness.

Rules. I can make a checklist. I do this.

God must do that. I show him my accomplishments at the end of the day, and he gives me a good score.

Blessed relief. Rules to follow that bind both me and God. No, no.

Paul has yanked that rug out from under us, and thank God because it only leads to death.

It only leads to failure. It only leads to anguish, and depression, and discouragement. It doesn't lead anywhere near what is sometimes called the victorious

Christian life. Failure. Failure.

How many of us would take a road that is marked failure? And if I wrote a book, and I said, here's how to fail at everything you're trying to do.

Here's how to make no accomplishments, but always think you should, and at the end of this book, you're going to be completely disgusted with yourself.

No, that would never sell, I would hope. Let me ask you this way. Do you want to be successful?

All of us at some level want to be successful. We want to be successful as husbands, as wives, as parents. We want to be successful in our jobs.

We want to be successful as Christians. We want to be successful against that law.

What if I could teach you to succeed against the only perfect body of law ever written? What if right here, right now, right from this pulpit,

I was able to tell you how not just to succeed, but to succeed superlatively.

An A plus would be too light a grade. Do you want to succeed? Do you want to get off that treadmill of constant effort and failure, and effort and failure, and you jump back on, and it throws you off again?

Do you want the opposite? Succeed. Successful.

This is gonna sound a bit like C. Dick Run. Believe the gospel. Believe the gospel of the

Lord Jesus Christ. Christ's righteousness is yours if you believe that gospel.

His obedience, which was perfect, is credited to you by faith if you believe that gospel.

You were in him when he died for your sins. His suffering is counted yours. How much did he suffer?

He suffered fully. We said it is finished. That meant all God's wrath, the full measure of his fury, not so much as a frown left out.

And the fullness of his righteous adherence to God's law is no different. It's Jesus' grade, if we can call it that.

Jesus' grade is, by faith, yours. You have succeeded, and now you have died to that law, and died to that rule -keeping, and died to that constant effort.

Stop and trust Christ, whose righteousness is yours by faith.

Be done with that law -keeping tendency. You've passed the course. Can I say it that way?

You've passed. You're done. You graduated. You believe in Jesus Christ? Matriculate.

Be done. Jesus did it for you. God's satisfaction in his son is the same that he has for you.

Now move on to the new life in the Spirit of God, the one who opens your heart, the eyes of your heart, to understand and believe these truths.

Look at verse 6, please. Now we are released.

There's our word again, that strong word. Now we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive, so that we serve not under the old written code, but in the new life of the

Spirit, released because we, through Christ, have died to it.

The law cannot hold a dead person captive, and captive is what we were. Another very strong Greek word, katecho, is this word.

You don't have to remember that, but it means to keep within limits in a confining manner.

Sounds claustrophobic, and I think it really is. There's no be all you can be.

There's no spread your wings and fly. You're a prisoner. You're being held captive by it. You're under the lordship of a guard who gives you no comfort and no relief, only failure, only that constant nagging guilt of not measuring up, only a steady decline in any hope for the future, captive, bound up, and locked away, held prisoner, held captive.

You know, that word is so strong, captive, katecho, is the same word that we had a long time ago, back in chapter 1 and verse 18.

Men suppress the truth, and this is what they do, the same word. When they suppress the truth, they are katecho -ing it.

They labor against its nagging and its unwelcome truth, consigning it to a scrap heap of a seared conscience.

This is the violence the law does against you. If you would try to achieve by it what

Paul says, what the scripture everywhere says, what Jesus himself says, only he could do.

By having died to Christ, of course we mean having repented of your sins, fled to him for forgiveness.

You're free of all that. You're free. You're released from it. You're as much released from that law as the woman whose husband has died is free from the law of marriage.

To borrow from Dr. Martin Luther King, with all due respect, how did he end that great speech? Free at last, free at last.

Thank God almighty, we're free at last. Do you know that freedom, church? Do you know that Christ achieved for you all that you need to stand before God, to go boldly to the throne of grace, by grace you've been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves?

Do you know the freedom that this means? Not free from all law. We're going to come to that in the book of Romans.

We're not left to ourselves. Heaven forbid we're left to ourselves to figure out what we should do at any given moment.

It's free from the law, free from the effort, free from the works of the flesh, free from that thing that produces only death in us, and now attached to him by whom, through whom, because of him, by the power of the

Spirit of God, we produce fruit to God, such as what I read in Galatians 5 .22.

Free at last. Plead with you. Don't strive after what

Christ has done. Count on it. Believe in it.

Stand on it and move past it. Now we serve

God by faith in Christ in the new life that we have in the Holy Spirit. If you're in Christ, you live in an entirely new age.

Obedience to the written code stands aside to the new way of the Spirit, and I'll warn you here, this takes courage.

This takes trust. Faith is the only way to walk this walk. Trust God that the

Holy Spirit of God is a real, enlivening, invigorating, life -bringing Spirit.

Not an it. He's a he. He's a third person in Trinity. He is as much God as the

Father is God and as the Son is God. Trust his word that believe that he will dwell in you.

Believe that he will remind you of all that Christ commands you. Trust that he's not a trick of the light, but he's the very presence of God.

This is hard. We're not set on our own to make our own rules.

That's not at all what Paul is saying. This is for everyone who just can't let go of the security of the law, of the doing, of the working.

Those who need rules the way Linus needed his famous blanket. It's a freedom which, if we're honest, is sort of scary.

We get so used to the rules, we grow to need them. We're afraid if they're taken away, we just won't know what to do.

We won't know when to get up in the morning. We won't know when to go to the restroom. We don't have a rule any longer.

And I think this speaks to the heart of this for many of us.

We don't know when God's happy with us. We don't know when God's pleased, when he's accepting.

When is God pleased with you? It's when he sees

Jesus Christ in you. Why does God accept you? Because he finds you in his beloved, in Jesus Christ, Ephesians 1 .13.

What did you do to bring this favor of God upon yourself? You know, if I were a little bit more charismatic, maybe a little braver, this is where I would tell the church, can

I hear an amen? I put my hand to my ear and I'd shout out, I'd say, can I hear an amen? What did you do to bring this about?

And the scripture says nothing. And the churches say, amen, hallelujah. Because it doesn't depend on me.

It doesn't depend on you. It depends upon Christ. Stop the striving.

Paul says you're free of that. That's been taken out of the way. This is tough.

The security of the law, the doing, the visual we have with our checklists. And what do we do?

So often we return. We erect these cathedrals of rules, which we are sure will keep us on track.

We seek to hold on to that which we did not earn by means of that which we cannot do. We go back to the law over and again.

Are you familiar with basic life principles? If you read that, if you look at that very closely, you'll find the law resurrected and parsed out in enough detail to make a

Pharisee swoon. And people flock to it. And why? It's not that it was in and of itself so wrong, but people want the comfort of the rules, of the checklists.

They say, okay, if I do these things, then I can be assured that God isn't angry with me today. God is angry at sinners every day, says the psalmist.

Is God angry at your sin? He certainly isn't pleased. Is he angry in this way? Christ took in himself all of God's anger.

Christ gives us means to go before God even now and repent of our sin and be restored to full righteousness before him.

Now for too many, it's just not enough to believe that Christ has saved you. We want assurances that we can generate ourselves, assurances that we control.

It's not enough for some of us that Jesus said in John 17, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them.

Who is them? Immediately it was the apostles. But by extension, it's the church.

And loved them even as you loved me. It's been a few years since we've preached through John.

I remember staying here when we got to this verse, equals. It equals. The love that God the

Father has for Christ the Son equals the love that the Father has for those who are in the

Son. It's the same love. We don't need the rules.

Brooks Hatlin, the character I was speaking of in Shawshank Redemption, when he became free, he couldn't take it.

He had to become free from this fear of freedom and he did it in the movie by taking his own life.

He got to the point that he couldn't trust himself without a prison guard telling him when to eat or a bell ringing telling him when to go to sleep or when to use the restroom or anything.

He couldn't stand the freedom. Am I saying let go and let

God? No. I don't like that expression any more than most of you do. But let me tell you something about it.

You'd be better off to let go and let God than to not let go of the law.

This is trust. This is faith. This is relying on God's promises in his word that he by his

Spirit, the Spirit of Christ within, will guide you. He will constrain you.

And as we're faithful to him through study of the scripture, through the ministry of the church and the saints that are amongst us, as we edify and build one another up, as we rebuke and encourage and correct one another, and we all together grow into the image of the

Lord Jesus Christ, Johann von

Staupitz was Martin Luther's mentor. And when he heard from Martin Luther how he understood

Romans 117, the righteous shall live by faith, he was aghast. And he said something, and I got this from the 1953 movie, and as I recall the biography, which

I didn't look at before I put it in my notes, but I think this is pretty true to what was actually recorded in that biography.

Staupitz said to him, Doctor, I mean Dr. Luther, Doctor, if you leave the Christian to live only by faith, if you sweep away all good works, all these glorious things that you dismiss as mere crutches, what will you put in their place?

Are you thinking of that this morning? Pastor, are you taking away the law?

Are you taking away my checklist? Are you taking away my precious self -effort by which at the end of the day

I know that God's got to give me at least something better than an F minus? Are you taking all that away?

What will you put in its place? What will we do without the rules?

How will we ever live rightly if not by the rules of the church? That's what von Staupitz was asking.

Luther answered, with this I close, Christ. Man needs only

Jesus Christ. Amen. Heavenly Father, thank you for this word that you've given us.

Thank you, Father, for the freedom that we have to follow you by the Spirit of God, not by the law which had only exposed our sin.

I pray, Father, that as we go on about this Christian life that you have given us, life in your

Spirit, Lord, that we would produce fruit that brings glory to your name. We ask in Jesus' name. Amen.