Much Obliged, Really.

Much Obliged, Sir.

My obligations bring me, what exactly?

Paul rapturously proclaims what God does for us. God places us beyond condemnation.  He lavishes on us His Spirit, the part of God empowering Jesus and raising Him from the dead.  In the Spirit, God frees us free from wrath, sin and death.  He condemns sin in us, to help us overcome it.  God enters us to dwell in us.  WOW.

Now Paul turns to our response. 

So what is our response?  Paul: Therefore, brothers and sisters, we have an obligation.[1]  We stare at the Builder generation to ask, “What is this obligation business?  It’s not our style.  We love Christ’s love and free stuff!  Thanks so much!  See ya!” 

The Builders knew obligations.  The world called on them to lift us from a depression, fight World War II and Communism.  The builders responded when the world called.  They left their footprints on the moon. 

Who now takes their places?  Men and women were obliged to mortgage homes to start an economy.  They were obliged to teach scriptures, love friends, paint, change light bulbs, and sacrifice driving new cars to give to the Lord.  Who now takes their places?  People were obliged to sense God’s call on them and serve ‘round the world.  Who now takes their places?

Paul says you will take their places, if you love Jesus.

We live with obligations.  Do you know the seven dwarves’ song in the original Snow White?  “Hi-ho, Hi-ho, it’s off to work I go!”  I laughed to see a bumper sticker on the back of a Benz in Miami.  “I owe, I owe, so off to work I go!”

Jill’s sister trained employees for Amex.  She said new, young ones are a bit scary.  They know what they want.  They clearly see what Amex can do for them, but have no sense of what they owe the company in return.  She found some are hard to train.

This study is about doing God’s work — building His Kingdom as we owe Him so much. 

Paul recites God’s amazing works in Christ.  We obligingly respond asking God to do great things in us: amazing things through us.  Look at vows: If a man makes a vow to the Lord, or takes an oath to bind himself with a binding obligation, he shall not violate his word; he shall do according to all that proceeds out of his mouth.[2]  The word, issar, is a bond, a binding obligation.

Mr. Marshall’s knees were scarred.  He promised God that if he returned from World War II he would go to church … on his knees.  He did: two miles.  His knee pads helped for 500 yards.  He painfully kept his vow.  Is your vow your bond?  Can God bank on your word?  How strong are your obligations?

The sense of obligation springs from early ideas of revenge and law.  In a personal offence a transgressor became a debtor to the injured party (I hurt you. I owe you).  Only an injured party can liquidate revenge on a debt owed to him.  That moved from personal revenge to national law, and the guilty party became a debtor to the law.  (Dump oil in an Alaskan harbor, and you owe America.  See you in court.)  In Israel it also meant a guilty party owed a penance to God.  So, if I hurt you, I may owe you, the law (nation), and God all three!

A sense of owing a debt to a virtue derives in Greek thought.  I’m obliged to fairness and honesty. Again, Greeks spoke of inner obligations.  The Jews owed debits to the Law and God.  The Greeks aspired.  Jews guilted! “He died. What’s it cost?  Two bulls and a ram?)  Philo merged both streams so we are obliged to Someone higher.  Out of Divine Law, we cherish a sense of the sacred … to be good or courageous.

The Jews got stuck thinking our relation to God is a legal relationship. Indebtedness marks our relation to God.  Jesus bridged the gap, even before the cross where He leveled the playing field.  Jesus told a story.  Do you know it?

The kingdom of heaven is like a king who wished to settle accounts with his slaves. When he began settling them, workers brought him one who owed ten thousand talents. (Think trillions.)  [This slave] had no means to repay. The king commanded him to be sold, with his wife, children and all he had, to make the payment.  The slave prostrated himself before the king, saying, “Have patience with me, and I’ll repay everything!” (In a thousand lifetimes if you never eat or sleep!)  And the lord of that slave felt compassion and released him and forgave him the debt. But the slave went out, found a fellow slave who owed him [a hundred bucks].  He seized him and began choking him, saying, “Pay back what you owe me!”  The king calls the forgiven servant to ask, “Should you not also have mercy on a fellow slave, as I had mercy on you?’  And his lord, in anger, handed him over to the torturers until he should repay all that was owed him. ‘So shall My heavenly Father also do to you, if each of you does not forgive his brother from your heart.’[3]

Jesus says we’re obligated.  Our first obligation forgives others as we have been!

Paul lived out a deep obligation to Christ’s amazing grace.  Reread this letter’s opening: I am obliged both to Greeks and to barbarians both to the wise and to the foolish. [4]  Paul begins with his obligation to us because of Christ.  Now he includes us so brothers and sisters, we are under obligation, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh.  [5]

The verse sounds so odd!  It’s a rhetorical tool, a meiosis, where less is said than intended.  This meiosis is more than what is not said, in it the direction of the thought changes. 

Let’s say I tell you how excited I am for my wedding anniversary: how Jill puts up with me, blesses and loves me.  How she makes each day possible.  As I build to a climax to say, “Thanks for the years, Jill,” I say, “I owe so much of our years, not to Elon Musk!” 

The weirdness hits you.  Elon and I are not an item… never married.  I owe him nothing.

This meiosis is even stronger.  Let’s say I tell you how thrilled I am to leave a hospital after ten surgeries … on being hit by a drunk driver.  I thank doctors, nurses, therapists and chaplains.  I build to a climax: “And I owe so much, not to the drunk who hit me.”  I stop.  What you want to fill in screams at you in its absence.  Do you fill in where Paul stops?  

Read the verses again.  Paul never answers the second half!  Do you? 

Brothers and sisters, we have an obligation ¾ but not to the sinful nature, to live according to it???  For if we live according to the sinful nature, we die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the body’s misdeeds, you will live, because we who are led by God’s Spirit are God’s children!  For we did not receive a spirit making us slaves again to fear, but we received the Spirit of sonship. And by Him we cry, “Abba, Father.”  The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit (my most true self) that we’re God’s children.  Now if we’re children, then we’re heirs – heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in His sufferings in order to also share in His glory. [6]

Sin in me, law, religion, anything less than Christ’s miracle in me, in my soul, is worthless.  Paul: I count all things as loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish in order that I may gain Christ![7]  If you lose nothing, give nothing, obligated nothing, you miss this truth. 

Jesus promises.  We leave behind our debts our obligations as we forgave others.  And forgive us our debts, (failed obligations), as we forgive our debtors, [8] Jesus’ word is the one Paul uses: opheiletes; a debtor, culprit, indebted, owed as failed obligations!

Jesus explained further: If you forgive men their transgressions, your heavenly Father also forgives you.  But if you don’t forgive men, then your Father will not forgive your transgressions.

Jesus hates wrecked obligations.  Woe to you, blind guides! You say, “If I swear by the temple, it means nothing; but if I swear by the temple’s gold, I’m bound by my oath.” Blind fools! Which is greater: the gold, or the temple that makes the gold sacred?[9]  

Do you think we have a problem with obligations? We thank God for His gifts, yet spend 2% of our incomes on philanthropy.  How much are you obliged to God for His gift in Christ to you?  Skip smarmy sap.  Look at your scheduling app and check book.  Read the truth there. 

Do you think losing obligations affects us?  Bankruptcies fell to 683 thousand last year.

A lawyer friend recently remarked how many people are criminally irresponsible in finances if they have no picture of obligations.  Why is all this happening?

Alexander Pope described a man he despised.  Pope condemned the man saying he blamed everyone else for his shortcomings.  Worse, he made a timid foe and suspicious friend.  Even fools and flatterers dreaded him.  The worst, though, was that “He was so obliging, that he ne’er oblig’d (sic)” [1607].  People have ducked obligations for a long time.

Bankruptcy, divorce, cheating in marriages, workplace theft all show missed obligations. 

Is there a minimum amount of obligation…say for moms?  Governor Mike Huckabee and the courts agreed with Marie Riggs. She deserved to die. She was executed within two years of her crimes, at her request.  She asked for morphine and potassium chloride: she used them on her babies.  Marie told jurors: “I want to die. I want to be with my babies. I want the death penalty.”[10]

People need at least our minimum obligation in Christ.  In Jesus’ story of a failed minimum. a master vested a servant with a hefty amount, one talent.  As others doubled each trust, he buried his.  Felt bad doing nothing.  Fretted over his follow-up interview with the lord.  He wasn’t immoral.  He didn’t lose it.  He sat on it fearing his master.  Jesus says the servant of the failed minimum was banished to darkness: with weeping, gnashing of teeth and maybe Marie Riggs? 

See another thing.  Our highest obligation is a calling to stagger the imagination: those led by God’s Spirit are His daughters.  You did not receive a spirit making you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship.  By Him we cry, “Abba, Father.” The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit: we are God’s children.  Now if we’re children, then we’re heirs: heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in His sufferings we may also share in His glory. [11]  What an obligation!

See then a wide range of obligation. In a bare minimum slaves and unhappy people work all the way up to the astounding reaches of being God’s sons and daughters, heirs worth their word!

Blessing:  When you find yourself out in life this week, and hear God’s greatest confidence in you, your deepest obligation, be thrilled, “I knew I could count on you, my child.”

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[1] Romans 8:12

[2] Numbers 30:2ff

[3] Matthew 18:23ff 

[4] Romans 1:14

[5] Romans 8:12

[6] Romans 8:12 ff

[7] Philippians 3:8

[8] Matthew 6:12 

[9] Matthew 23:16ff 

[10] (USA Today, May 3, 2000, page 4A).

[11] Romans 8:14 – 17

No Condemnation

No Condemnation: Too Revolutionary for You?

The Heart of the Message: God’s Grace is Jesus’ amazing revelation.  That first step in him is no condemnation.  That revolution in your thinking, relationships, and future is your first step.  Take it and you are changed ― forever.

Is Paul alone in this revolutionary thought?  Did he “add” to Jesus works and words?

Romans 8:1-4 “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, 2because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death.

Do we feel condemned or judged?  If not, why are anxiety and panic at pandemic levels?

I taught the truth of “no condemnation” this way: the law of the Spirit is a “higher” law, such as the law of aerodynamics versus the law of gravity.  Taxi a 737 onto a runway.  Push its throttles forward.  The engines thunder.  They hurt unprotected ears.  The plane nudges.  It rolls forward.  Its engines scream in air, forcing through a small auditorium’s air every 100^th of a second.  Eighty-eight tons accelerate.  As a 737 accelerates, a second, higher law countermands the law of gravity.  Do passengers turn weightless?  No.  If the power quits, will the plane crash?  Yes.  Nevertheless, gaining speed, air flows over the tops of the wings faster than below them and an unseen force pushes up on both wings, lifting all into the air.  It makes a preposterous statement real:  “I flew to Chicago.”

So I need an external-now-internal power source throughout my life to go where God directs: His Holy Spirit power.  Only by the resurrected Christ’s power can I attain the heights.  This chapter centers on the Holy Spirit.

Chapter eight reveals God’s power in you.  Do you know his power?  Does Holy Spirit power drive you, empower you?  This power enters you when you take Christ as Lord — the Holy Spirit is God’s envoy in you.  Guess who is discussed more in this chapter than anywhere in the Bible?

It is God’s Spirit.  He empowers me to make Christ Lord.  He is God’s fusion reactor, plasma, electricity, the Lord’s clout or muscle to power my life.  Let’s compare.  The Spirit is mentioned 22 times in 150 Psalms.  Isaiah mentions Him 32 times.  The Book of Acts refers 45 times to the Spirit’s spread in the world.  In the first seven chapters Paul mentions the Spirit 6 times.  In this one chapter, Romans 8, God’s Spirit is mentioned 20 times! 

As you push forward the throttles of your life in Christ, God promises the Spirit will flow, the fuel will explode, and you can fly, obey, be different, be healed, and stay new. 

I teach that the Spirit is 1) God’s power in us to be what we cannot be on our own.  Amen.  May the Spirit’s power, Jehovah Jireh’s promise to live in you, empower you.  2) Like aerodynamics, he is a higher law enabling us to overcome gravity. 

I missed a deeper truth.  Why no condemnation?  How is condemnation first before sin?  We know condemnation.  We all experience it.  Older kids chose everyone else for baseball, soccer, or football.  Everyone gets chosen but me and Elbert’s booger-eating brother, I know judging left me standing so … alone.  Judging separated me from everyone already selected.  Judging, condemnation is more than a failed standard, it separates me from God.  At the critical moment, condemnation says, “I’m left out.” 

Condemnation was that feeling walking down a school hall that “they,” whoever “they” were, judged me as less.  Worse, I felt tons of others followed “their” assessments.  If I were a slug, a geek, a dweeb, a dumb jock, or an easy girl, then “they” shared that with everyone and everyone accepted their assessment.  Their assessment separated me as a … whatever.  I was separated from someone I would rather be. 

Krino means condemnation: to decide, to rule, or to judge.  Remember this: krino does not mean an ethical norm, it means an expectation from someone who loves you.  We see judging as standards: for jock, cool or brainy that finds me wanting.  God says the opposite: “you shall be my people, and I will be your God.”  For God it is always about a relationship, and good laws safeguard the relationship.  It is always about being in love with God as He is with us. 

Paul says more than any law; more than anyone’s opinion; more than judging whispers; more than “their” assessments¾  God promised a thing, and now gives it teeth.  He moves the Spirit INTO us.  God showed a relationship is possible, but now empowers it.  God says this beats hell of judging each other.  We glimpse Heaven.  For God, it was about a relationship from the beginning.  He krinos us, loves us. 

The Jews saw God’s Law as an avenue showing we are safe.  It reaches beyond morality and ethics.  The Law helped us love God, but we sin. We fail the relationship.  We whine and hate the standard.  Paul responds, “No condemnation!”  He screams a thing beyond justice, beyond morals.  He screams, “The Bridegroom vanished our entanglements!  He makes us His again in the Spirit!”  Did Paul make this up?  No.  He knows his Bible. 

God has always sought us.  Paul knew this rang true before Jesus.  God described being God: krinowing or judging.  Krinow opposes what we do to each other.  We judge struggling souls.  All our condemnation goes wrong.  God uses krinowing to say the opposite!  He is the coach who tells the truth in love.  You CAN run faster.  He is a lab teacher, coaxing us to think through knotty problems, because He knows you can solve it.  He is always the Father who points out consequences too costly in mistakes, and too wonderful in getting it right. 

Hear God krinow us: Hosea 2:14-16.  [I will again] allure her.  I will lead her into the desert and speak tenderly to her.  ¹⁵There I will give her back her vineyards, and will make [your home] a door of hope…. 16″In that day,” declares [krinows] the Lord, “you will call me ‘my husband’; you will no longer call me ‘my master.’  See God’s judgment?  He will not see us as sluts, or fools.  He judges that we always were and will be His bride. 

Jeremiah 2:2-7 Go and proclaim: “I remember the devotion of your youth, how as a bride you loved me and followed me through the desert.”  Sinning fails a standard.  Worse, it walks out on a relationship!

Always, God offers relationship and intimacy.  We think we run from His condemnation as Master.  Do you hear God?  He is more like Husband than Master!  Jesus echoes Him, John 15:15 I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business.  Instead, I call you friends, for all I learned from my Father I made known to you.  God krinows us to be His bride.  Jesus krinows us to be His friend. 

God sees us as a new wife.  We fail Him.  Jesus sees us as friends who lay down our lives for HIS friends.  We fail Jesus like we fail the Father.  THAT is what Paul screams at the end of chapter seven!  Oh wretched man, WHO will deliver me?  Paul, the Pharisee was trapped in rules.  He knew Pharisees so sure of themselves, of their holiness, that they saw the rest of us as failures.  Paul knew Pharisees so entangled in failures they feared God and eternity.  Wretched man, who can deliver me from religions’ failures?  Who knows me and still loves me?  Look!  No condemnation to those who are in Christ empowered by this SPIRIT!

Romans 8:1-4 “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, 2because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit (Spirit = Power in the Relationship) of life set me free from the law (reality) of sin and death. 3For what the law (all truths, all realities) was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the sinful nature, God did by sending his own Son (Jesus = Relationship) in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in sinful man, 4in order that the righteous requirements of the law (these = life in God!) might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the sinful nature but according to the Spirit.

Can we live beyond negative condemnation?  Cut “8” in half and go to chapter four.  4:3 what does Scripture say? ‘Abraham believed God [relationship!], and it was credited to him as righteousness.’  Abraham failed plenty, but clung to his relationship above all else.  Read further, 4:6-8 David says the same thing: ⁷“Blessed are they whose transgressions are forgiven…. 8Blessed is the man whose sin the Lord will never count against him.  Blessed am I when I step beyond condemnation to love God.  Divide 4 by 2.  In chapter 2:4:  Do you think lightly of the riches of His kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God’s kindness leads you to repentance? His kindness reminds you of who you are. 

Is Paul alone here?  Far from it, rule keepers and religionists.  God makes my motivation love, not fear.  Consider a passage too radical for many Christians. 

John 8:3-12 The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand before the group 4and said to Jesus, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. 5In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?” 6They were using this question as a trap, in order to have a basis for accusing him.

But Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger. 7When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, “If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her.” 8Again he stooped down and wrote on the ground.

9At this, those who heard began to go away one at a time, the older ones first, until only Jesus was left, with the woman still standing there. 10Jesus straightened up and asked her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?”

11″No one, sir,” she said.

“Then neither do I condemn you,” Jesus declared. “Go now and leave your life of sin.”

12When Jesus spoke again to the people, he said, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”  Can you mean someone like her, Jesus?!  You must be kidding!

Still don’t believe how radical is a relationship God intends for you rather than what you now have? 

Divide John 8 by 2:  John 4:23. 23 … a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth (you need Spirit and Truth beyond religion!), for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks.

This woman used by six men was condemned (krinowed) by God’s Son as only love.  How did she react?  28-29   she left her water jar, and went back to the town and told people, 29″Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Christ?”  Translated: bring your score cards!  Come talk to this man! 

Still sitting on a runway loaded down?  God used Job to show our judgments are pointless.  God kept Job’s relationship.  Jeremiah and Isaiah knew: God restores beyond all failures.  Hosea: beyond his wife’s failures, was a love, a krinow, that he must cherish her. 

“No condemnation” requires God’s Spirit to touch it, much less fly in it.  “No condemnation” is hard to live because you must put down all your scores against, well, everyone.  “No condemnation” is hard to live as you must love and believe God changes people you know are wretches.  “No condemnation” is so hard to live since we cannot live it without Christ as Lord, and His Spirit enabling us as his revolutionary. 

A) You want to be whole?  Paul says, Wretched one, that I am, who can deliver me to a place beyond condemnation?  Only in Christ as the Spirit empowers you.  You see, we don’t replace the law of sin, but live in a higher law of the Spirit.  That’s good, but this is what I missed. 

B) I replace the Recipe Book with the Cook.  I replace a mystery book with the Author.  I move beyond rules to the Ruler.  I bag my legislation to love the King.  I move past poetry to the Poet!  This place with Him beyond condemnation: it’s a place of tenderness, of different motivation, of diametrically opposed assessment.  My failures are not damning, they are overcome as He krinows me to be an overcomer, by placing His very Self, His very Spirit in my breast!