For the last three Sundays, while we have been reading Jesus’s parables about seeds and weeds, hidden treasure and the pearl of great price, we have also heard chapter 8 of Paul’s Epistle to the Romans. Now Romans is Paul’s longest and most profound letter, and chapter 8 is its heart. John Stott, the British evangelical preacher, has called this chapter “a pillow on which to rest our weary heads”. It also contains some of the greatest hits of St Paul’s memorable quotations and ideas; I would like to unpack some of those with you in a moment.
However, the essence of this chapter is that God has a plan, and we are part of it. God has a plan for the cosmos, God has a plan for human history, and God has a plan for each one of us. As the song goes, “He’s got the whole world in his hand”. Or as Paul says: If God is for us, who is against us?
The secular worldview, the one which dominates Western society, has rejected any overarching storyline to life. There is no big picture. As a result, horizons have collapsed and imaginations shrivelled. The entire meaning of life can be reduced to seeking pleasure, status and comfort before we die. However, to live with peace, we need to be anchored to a larger narrative. To live with confidence, we need a hope that even suffering and death cannot snatch away. That larger narrative, the big picture, God’s plan, is precisely what Paul is talking about in this chapter.
He begins, in verse 1, by announcing that there is no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus. In other words, those who have accepted Christ, not in name only, not with our lips, but in our hearts, have been set free from sin – and we have a shot at righteousness. Well what’s that, and why should we want it? The normal and most frequent use of “righteousness” is simply doing what is right, doing God’s will: in other words, standing in good stead with our own life and with those around us. Another way of thinking of righteous person is a whole person, a healed person, who acts from the heart. And if you want an example of what a righteous person in the NT looks like, then look to Joseph, who Matthew tells us was a righteous man. Why? Because when Mary, his teenage fiancée, got pregnant, he treated her with mercy and compassion. His concern was all for her: instead of denouncing her, and causing a public scandal, her resolved to ‘put her away quietly’. And as a result of that, he had a dream which told him that her pregnancy wasn’t what it appeared to be.
Isn’t this what Paul means when he says we must live in the Spirit, and not in the flesh? Instead of accepting our first instincts, acting on anger, or living from our me-first feelings, we should live according to the spirit, and the mind of the Spirit is life and peace.
So this is the next step in Paul’s argument: Christ offers us the chance of freedom – from sin, from our own SNAFU nature – but if we want to take it we have to stop living from our selfishness, what Paul calls our Flesh, and live from the Spirit instead.
If we do, a number of things follow: we become God’s children, and not just children but heirs. There’s an inheritance up ahead! But don’t get too excited, Paul isn’t promising an easy life: he certainly isn’t preaching the prosperity gospel. Indeed, in the very next verses he starts talking about the sufferings of the present time, which may well include our own sufferings. However, what he also says is that those who have accepted Christ, those who live in the Spirit, are now part of the solution – we are no longer part of the problem. Moreover he isn’t just talking about a local problem, a human problem, for the whole of creation has been groaning, has been subjected to futility. Few generations have been able to understand as well as our own how it could be that creation itself suffers from human sin; the vanishing species, the dying seas, the burning forests – all the destruction caused by lethally fast rises in global temperatures is patently the outcome of human egotism, the result of living in the Flesh, as Paul puts it. Left in the hands of selfish humans, there’s every reason to forecast doom. However, Romans is concerned with God’s purpose for planet Earth. This tells a more hopeful story because of the intervening grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. That is the essence of the gospel, and it applies not just to human souls but also to deserts and daisies and dolphins.
So really? We are now part of the solution? Certainly. Our Christian calling must involve that – we must live in environmental righteousness. Even our own children will not forgive us if we don’t learn to do that.
But let us return to Romans chapter 8, for now we have come to Paul’s great promise: We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose. Or we could rephrase that in the words of South Africa’s Archbishop, Desmond Tutu – talking to a discouraged congregation in the darkest hours of apartheid, he said: ‘Don’t worry, I’ve read to the end of the book. We win.’ That is the big picture you will find in Romans chapter 8, that is the essence of God’s unstoppable plan. So don’t just read Romans 8. It’s far too important for that. Memorise it, meditate on it and marinate your soul in it! For here is the heart of Paul’s message.