Sermonette - May 28, 2018

As I reflect on Romans 8:12-17, the assigned second reading for Trinity Sunday, I find myself drawn to the first half of verse 15. Paul writes, “For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear,” (Romans 8:15a). We are well aware of the fear of the unknown. I have known people who stayed in abusive relationships or dead-end jobs because of their fear of the unknown. I’m sure we all have, maybe we have experienced this ourselves. People can be enslaved in a hurtful life because fear is their master.

Paul spoke of this as living by the flesh. To live by the flesh is to be directed by the feelings and physical needs that are part of our bodies. If we are hungry, then hunger becomes the center of our existence. If we are envious, then the feeling of envy shapes our actions. The dominant power directing such a life is the fear of death. We can easily become enslaved to our immediate needs and fears. It is part of our human brokenness. Paul calls this a “spirit of slavery.”

Paul spoke of the alternative to this slavery as living by the Spirit. Paul reminds us that we have received a “spirit of adoption.” To live by the Spirit of God is to be adopted into the family of God. Fear rules you like a slave, but God treats you like a family member. To be a child of God means to be guided in life by one who knows no fear and calls us to have courage for the future.

To live by the Spirit is to be directed by the pull of God’s future rather than be driven by the fear of our insecurities. It is to trust that God’s creative Spirit can speak in the midst of our chaos and form a new world out of nothing. It is to allow God’s Spirit to shape our spirit so that we move away from fear to hope. It does not mean that we will not suffer, our Lord and Savior, Jesus the Christ certainly did. But it means that in our own faithfulness, we will be heirs with Christ and glorify God.

In this contrast between living in fear with the “spirit of slavery” and living in the gift of the “spirit of adoption,” Paul reminds us that we have a new identity. Our broken, sinful, fearful lives as slaves has given way to the new life we enjoy as children of God and “joint heirs with Christ.”

That, then, is the truth that is the great climax to this grand passage. The new spirit within us responds to the Holy Spirit of God with an exclamation of love because we are first loved by God and made part of God’s family as his children. We are assured of who we are in Christ. And that new status and identity carries us through what the rest of this life holds for us and on into glory! Glory be to God!