A Priestly Mind

 August 6 2023

Romans 8:1-11

         To say that these times are anxious times, might be an understatement. Yet if truth be told, every age has always had its reason to be anxious and worried. When we find ourselves overwhelmed by what seems to be the shaking of our foundations we rightly begin to wonder, does God have anything to say about our concerns and our fears or are we merely to face life with a stiff upper lip. No, God most assuredly is aware of our anxieties and worries yet his answer as to how we are to face such times may not be exactly the solution that we hope for. It also may surprise us that God’s answer as to how we are to be set free from all that eats away at us is to be found right here in the first few verses of the eighth chapter of the book of Romans.

To help us get a better grasp of what is happening here in this letter that Paul has written to the Church at Rome we need to remember what we have been taught since we began our study in the fifth chapter of this letter. We might recall that what justifies us is our resurrection faith, this belief that our God can indeed give life to the dead and he is the one who can call into existence those things which do not exist. This is the faith that justifies our claim of being righteous, the faith that backs up our claim that we have peace with God. It is resurrection faith which opens the way for us to be welcomed into the very love which God the Father has always loved the Son, this place called grace.  Jesus welcomes us home and he gives us the gift of the Holy Spirit, the one who pours the very love of God into our hearts. This is the beginning of this journey that Paul is leading us on. As we follow Paul we discover that God stands with us, this is how he shows his love for us. For God to be able to stand with us he had to forgive us through what Jesus did for us on the cross. God forgave us when we were weak in our faith, those who dishonored him, sinners, his very enemies. The take away for all of us is that if we wish to remain standing with God then we too have to forgive others and be reconciled with them. This is the only way for us to remain standing with God.  

Paul then gave us a little history lesson beginning with the sin of Adam up through the time when God gave Israel the Law. What was discovered was that the Law made sin all the more powerful. Yet what was also discovered is that God, in his love, remained faithful to Israel when they were obedient to do what the Law called them to do and, surprisingly, God, in his love, remained faithful to Israel when their sin became so great that he was justified in his exiling Israel off to Babylon. The reason why God never abandoned Israel when they sinned against him is that the love of God is holy. This holy love is the love of the God who treasures us simply because this is what God chooses to do. So, when we come up out of the waters of our baptism, we are to live as those who have been set free from the slavery of sin. In our freedom we are free to choose just who it is that we shall serve, sin or God. Since we know that our God is a God who treasures us, the God whose love for us never waivers, since this is true of God then it makes sense that we would treasure God. God becomes for us our treasure who is in heaven. When we treasure God then we treasure the words that God speaks to us, obedient to do what God is calling us to do. And as Jesus teaches us in the sixth chapter of Matthew, where our treasure is this is where our heart is. 

Last week, Paul was teaching us that our goal for us who now live on resurrection ground is that we are to bear fruit for God now that we are dead to the Law. As we discovered last week, this bearing fruit is when we allow our life to be given to God as our love offering to him. Jesus tells us that there is no greater love than the one who lays down his life for his friends. This is what Jesus has done for us and this is how we too are to love, with the willingness to give our very life, if necessary, out of our love for God. 

Now if you look back over what we have learned so far, what we find is that Paul has called us to treasure who is in heaven, our Heavenly Father. And since we make our Heavenly Father our treasure then we know that he is held dear in our hearts. And when our lives our offered up to God as a love offering this is when we bear fruit for God. Compare this to what Jesus called the Great Commandment from the sixth chapter of Deuteronomy, “Hear O, Israel: The Lord our God is one. You shall love the Lord you God with all of your heart, with all of your life and with all of your resources. You see, when you treasure God then this is when God is loved dearly from ones heart. And when one offers their life as an act of love to God this is when one can say that they love God with their very life. So, at last, we come to our might, all of the resources that God has so graciously given to us. These resources are to no longer be our treasures on earth, but instead we are to ask just how is God to be loved through all that he has given to us? Now, it is probably pretty difficult for us to see how what Paul is saying here, how this has anything at all to do with how we are to love God with our resources especially when this chapter begins,“ There is therefore now no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus.” Quite often we simply hear this as the good news that for those who are in Christ Jesus never have to fear being found condemned by God. This might be the way you too may have understood what Paul is saying here and this is very much true, but, what if, Paul is saying to his audience that therefore there should be no condemning of one another among those who are found in Christ Jesus? It becomes clearer that this is what Paul is telling us when we see that what he is writing here is a continuance of what he was writing in the seventh chapter concerning our bearing fruit for God. After Paul warns his audience that at one time they were bearing nothing more than fruit for death but now, released from the Law, having died to that which held them captive, now they were to serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code. This is where Paul picks up this thread at the beginning of the eighth chapter. He continues by stating that now, because they are released from the Law, having died to that which held them captive, there is to be no passing of a sentence of judgment upon someone who belongs to Christ Jesus. We shouldn’t be doing such things because, as Paul explains, it is the law of the Spirit of life, this is what has set us free from the law of sin and death. So, it is the Spirit, this is who has set us free from this focus on death, on the judging and condemning others to death, because this is not what we are about, because we have been give the Spirit of life. God has done what the law could never do; God gave us life. Where our flesh had no power to fulfill the Law and we therefore were as good as dead, God came along and gave us life.  It was Jesus who came in the likeness of sinful flesh to take his life and give himself as a love offering all so that he could pass judgment upon the sin which kept our flesh from bringing glory to God. This means that if we are to be living people who can bring forth the righteousness God demands, then we must be people who rely upon the power of the one that Paul calls the Spirit of life.   

As Paul continues in this eighth chapter, it becomes obvious that we must figure out just what Paul means by, “life in the flesh”, and, “life in the Spirit”. It is Jesus who teaches us about this difference at the end of the sixth chapter of Matthew, stating, “Therefore, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat, or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on?”. You see these are the questions of a life focused solely upon the concerns of what Paul calls our, “flesh”. The focus of such a life is doing whatever we need to do to just live as long as humanly possible. Such a life with a mindset fueled by fear, loss, anxiety and worry, this is a life that is no life at all. It is a life where death has won because it is death which is really calling the shots.

         Yet all is not lost because Paul also speaks about life in the Holy Spirit. Instead of life in the flesh where all one can think about is death, when our minds are set on the Spirit, this is when we have life and peace. This phrase, “…life and peace”, seems to be an echo of a verse Paul knew from the second chapter of the prophet of Malachi where God, speaking of the Leviticus priests, said, “My covenant with him was one of life and peace and I gave it to them. It was a covenant of fear, and he feared me. He stood in awe of my name.” A life where the mind is set on the Spirit, then, is one that thinks of themselves as being priests to God. When the Spirit dwells in us, his holy love overwhelming us, then our greatest concern becomes life, a life given for all as an act of peace. As a priest who seeks life, we are to be people who are focused on offering and sacrifice, the giving of ones life so that others might live because this is the Jesus way. Instead of being driven by the fear of death, those who are priests fear only God. They are in awe of the name of God, amazed by his faithful, steadfast love which when enfleshed by our life became a life willing to offer itself for us. In the light of such a mighty act of God all other fears fall away and in their place is found our faith.

         Now, here is the very big difference between these two very different ways of life, the one where the mind is set on the flesh or the life where the mind is set on the Spirit, and that is that the mind set on the flesh can not please God. The reason for this is that the flesh is weak, it simply has no power to live a life that is ordered by the ways of God. Yet all is not lost because God promises us that blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of God. The blessing of living life under the reign of God begins with the admission that we are people who just do not have what it takes to be the righteous people that we should be. We need to come to the point where we know that we are people deserving of death yet it is there, in our sorrow at the state of our future, this is where God finds us, and he gives himself to us so that we might have life. This is the law of the Spirit, the very ways of God, this giving of life where life is needed, this is what sets us free from the law of sin and death. And God wonders, do we desire to be his kinds of people, people who caught up in the Spirit of God, caught up in following the ways of God, ready to offer all that we have and all that we are, to be those priests who bring life to those who so desperately are seeking life?  Those who live in the Spirit, those who seek to live by the ways of God, these are the ones called by Jesus, here at the end of the sixth chapter of Matthew, those who seek first the kingdom. If we are willing to make living this kingdom life our top priority then this is when Jesus goes on to promise us that our Heavenly Father will most assuredly watch over us, meeting all of of our needs. You see, when we live with our minds on the Spirit, experiencing life and peace as priests of God, we are living lives which point to the great truths about God. One of these truths is found in the sixth chapter of Luke, where Jesus orders us to give, give and it will be given to us in good measure. Jesus gives us this image of how God gives back to us saying that he will give us until eight have to take his abundance and, press it down, shake it together, and just let it run over to spill unto your lap. Because the truth is the measure you use, this is the measure God will use to give back to you.” The evidence of the truth of this promise of Jesus is ours to find out whenever our minds are set upon the Spirit. When we know ourselves as priests, when we know that we are those who are to be offerers of the offering of ourselves, giving our lively hood to those who need life, this is when we will see for ourselves that you just can’t out give our God. And you know what happens when you get on, giving to others what God has given to you and finding that God really does keeps on giving, this is when the worry and anxiety that you used to have, just doesn’t cross your mind anymore. Could we even go so far as to say that if we do have anxieties and worries that this is really our warning that we have stopped looking for the kingdom,  that we have stopped looking for those in need of the life that you and I can share with them. So, not only does setting our mind on the Spirit focus us on trying to out give God but, by the Spirit, we have also loved others as we would want to be loved. Through the Spirit, then, we have come to love God with all of our heart when we treasure the one who treasures us; through the Spirit we have offered up our very lives to God as an act of the greatest love of all; and, now, we, as priests to God, we take into our hands all of the bounty God has given to us and we give it to others as actions of life and peace. So, yes, it is the Spirit of God, this is who has caused the righteousness of God to be found in us. Our bodies may be dead because of sin but we can say that the Spirit is life because of the righteousness that is now found in us. You see, Paul began this eighth chapter stating that now there should no longer any condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Paul is saying that the ways of death, threatening others with a judgment of death, these are not the ways of Jesus because the ways of Jesus are not focused on death but are instead focused on life. Our minds are to be set on the ways of life because the ways of life are the very ways of the Holy Spirit. So, let us be done with the ways of death, the ways that drive us mad with worry and anxiety and instead, let us set our minds on the Spirit, so that we, as priests to God, can be said to be bringing life and peace wherever we go. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we who have found life in Christ were known as being those who bring life and peace wherever in the world we might go? So, remember this, we are priests to God, we are the ones  who offer the offering of ourselves, fully certain that we can never out give God who has given us life!. Amen!