NATIONAL COMMUNITY CHURCH
NATIONAL COMMUNITY CHURCH
June 17, 2012
More Than Conquerors: No Condemnation
Pastor Mark Batterson
More Than Conquerors! For the next several weeks, here’s what we are going to do – we are going camping! We are going to pitch a tent in Romans 8. We are going to build a bonfire, roast marshmallows and eat s’mores. We are going to camp out in Romans 8 because the goal is not to get through the Bible, the goal is to get the Bible through us! I’m not concerned about getting through Romans 8. What I’m concerned about is getting Romans 8 through us! It has to become our operating system. We’ve got to eat it, live it, breathe it, feel it. It can’t just be up here. It has to get into your gut and into your spirit. Romans 8, we are not conquerors, we are more than conquerors.
We are going to start in Romans 8:1
Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, [let’s say that together] Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus
A couple years ago, I read an interesting book entitled The Woman Who Can’t Forget. Some of you have heard of Jill Price. She has what scientists call hyperthymestic syndrome, which simply means that she has continuous automatic, autobiographical recall of every day of her life from the age of 14 on. Here’s the deal, most of us have a highly selective memory! In fact, some studies suggest that we remember about three percent of life events. So that means during a normal year, you might remember about 17 things, give or take, that really stamp your memory. Things you can’t forget, some are good, some are bad. We have highly selective memories but not Jill Price. It was fascinating to read because she remembers everything. For example, she remembers that the final episode of MASH aired on February 28, 1983. She also remembers that it was a rainy day and her windshield wipers weren’t working very well. That’s where the breakdown is. She remembers everything. She says in the book:
Imagine being able to remember every fight you ever had with a friend, every time someone let you down, all the stupid mistakes you’ve ever made, the meanest, most harmful things you’ve ever said to people and those they said to you, and then imagine not being able to push them out of your mind no matter what you try.
So here’s the problem for Jill, the emotions aren’t even dialed down. It is like it just happened. She said:
As I grew up, more and more memories were being stored in my brain. More and more of them flashed through my mind in this endless barrage and I became a prisoner to my memory.
Most of us don’t have that, but I know a lot of people that are prisoners to one or two or three memories, consciously or subconsciously. The ties they have to things that should have been forgiven and forgotten a long time ago have not been servered and they are living with condemnation. They are living under this cloud of condemnation that they can’t seem to get over.
I want to talk this week about how we get out. I think there is a way out. The way out is the cross of Jesus Christ. We are going to unpack Romans 8 word by word.
Whenever you find a ‘therefore’ in the Bible, you need to figure out what it is there for. In this case, it links back to Romans 5. Why is there no condemnation? Romans 5 says
Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. … You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. 7 Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. 8 But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
Isn’t that amazing! Maybe that’s where we ought to stop right now and try to get that from here to here. I think some people feel like they need to get their act together before they go to church. Seriously? That’s like saying I really need a doctor and I ought to go to the doctor, but I’m going to try to get well first. What? That makes no sense at all. Listen, God’s love is demonstrated in the fact that while we are at our worst, He is at his best. His love is unconditional. In other words, it is not conditioned by what we do or don’t do! God loves us perfectly. Then what needs to happen is we need to let that love condition us.
There is no condemnation because of the cross. We are more than conquerors because of what Christ accomplished on the cross. He paid the penalty for every sin, past, present and future. So you remember when Jesus was on the cross for several hours and there were a number of things He said? One of them, recorded in John’s gospel, is, “It is finished.” Now, that word is actually one word and it is a powerful word. What’s interesting is that it really is a word that is borrowed from the financial word, if you will, because it means paid in full. It is the final payment on a debt. So what Jesus was saying was, I am making the final payment for your sin. Now that’s when we ought to jump up and down! I don’t know about you, but have you ever had a loan paid off? Maybe a school loan or a home loan or a car loan, where it is the final payment. We experienced that with one of our vehicles and I remember feeling like, I thought I owned it but I really didn’t, the loan company owned until I paid for it. It was cool. I went out and had a joy ride! There is this feeling when a debt is paid off. What about our spiritual debt? Is there any greater feeling than knowing that all that you’ve done wrong has been forgiven?
II Corinthians 5:21 describes it this way
God made Him who had no sin to become sin for us so we might become the righteousness of God.
In other words, Jesus says here’s the deal, you transfer all of your sins to my account and then I’m going to transfer all of my righteousness to your account and we will call it even. That’s why it’s called the good news! It is almost like Jesus saying let me take the blame for everything you’ve done wrong and I’ll give you the credit for everything I did right. Are you serious? Yes! That’s the deal, the gospel, the good news! It is this transaction that happens when we put our faith in Christ. That is why the Bible says that we are not saved by anything we can do. In fact, our good deeds are as filthy rags. All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. We can’t measure up. The Bible says that if you break the law at one point, you are a lawbreaker. But the good news is that the sinless Son of God went to the cross for us and offered his righteousness to us. Well, how do we get that? By faith, by putting our faith in Jesus Christ, that transaction happens.
Colossians 2:14 says it this way.
He forgave all of our sins, having cancelled the statement of indebtedness with all of it particulars that were against us and that stood opposed to us, He has taken it away, nailing it to the cross.
Isn’t that awesome! Your sin has been nailed to the cross. That is why there is no condemnation, because it is nailed to the cross. The problem is that we go take that hammer and turn it around and we pry the nail out and we take the sins off the cross and live with the condemnation. But it says our sins have been nailed to the cross. Then in verse 15
Having disarmed the powers and authorities, He made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.
That’s why we are more than conquerors. We are going to talk about this. The enemy is going to try to remind you of your past, sins that you confessed. When he does that, why don’t you go ahead and remind him of his future.
Here’s the challenge, I’m thinking why don’t I get up every day and live in the full victory that was accomplished 2,000 years ago? I think many of us live as if the outcome is still uncertain. But when Jesus broke the seal on the tomb, it sealed the victory. The victory was sealed for us over death, over sin, over Satan, that victory was won 2,000 years ago.
Therefore, there is now
The key word here is ‘now.’ This is our present reality, not past tense, not just a victory that was won 2,000 years ago, but it is something that we’ve got to experience as present tense reality all the time. I love what Martin Luther said. He said, “Live as if Christ was crucified yesterday, rose from the dead today and is coming back tomorrow.”
We’ve got to realize that that victory that was won 2,000 years ago is our present tense reality. I think half of our problems have to do with mismanaging past, present and future. Things like guilt and anxiety, so we aren’t fully alive and fully present because we are so stuck in the past or so worried about the future. What we’ve got to do, his mercies are new every morning. Every morning, we’ve got to go back to the foot of the cross, thank Jesus for the victory that He won and live like it. We have this tendency to remember what we should forget and forget what we should remember. So we tend to remember the negative things that produce guilt in us instead of remembering the victory that Christ won. What if every day we said we are going to change the allotment of our mind and we are going to spend a lot more time contemplating on the fact that God demonstrated his love for us by going to the cross and then He walked out of that tomb and He is seated at the right hand of the Father? What if we thought about that more than our sin? Maybe we would begin to live in the victory and that here is therefore now no condemnation to them in Christ Jesus.
The next word is ‘no.’ None, zero, zilch, there is therefore now no condemnation. What is interesting is that in the Greek language, words would be placed differently depending on emphasis. So if a word is going to be emphasized, sometimes it would be placed right at the beginning of the sentence. But it is awkward in English so it gets translated differently. But in Romans 8:1, the first word in the sentence in the original language is the word ‘no.’ So what it really says is: No condemnation therefore is there now for those in Christ Jesus. No condemnation there.
Let’s talk about condemnation. It is a forensic term that denotes the removal of a curse. Galatians 3 says that Jesus redeemed us from the curse by becoming a curse for us, because the Bible actually says that cursed is he who is hung on a tree. So Jesus broke the curse by becoming a curse for us. And if you are taking notes, jot this down, because this where the present reality comes into play. Jesus broke the curse of sin so that we can break the cycle of sin.
Let me make an important distinction between conviction and condemnation. If you don’t understand this distinction, then you are probably going to live a long time wasting a lot of energy on false guilt. Conviction, the conviction of the Holy Spirit is when you feel bad for a sin that is unconfessed. That is the key. Then the Holy Spirit loves us so much that He is not going to let us wander into places that are going to ultimately hurt us and kill us, so He convicts us so we come back to a place where you realize that what you are doing is not life-giving. It is bringing death into your life; that what you are doing is not right, it is wrong. It doesn’t glorify God and it is going to hurt you. So the Holy Spirit convicts us until we come to that point when we confess the sin. So what is condemnation? Condemnation feels very similar but the difference is it is feeling guilt over confessed sin. So the conviction of the Holy Spirit is a wonderful thing. It is God producing a godly sorrow, a godly guilt in us so that we come back to the point of confession and repentance. But condemnation comes from the accuser of the brethren. That is one of the names that the Bible gives to our ancient enemy, sometimes called Satan, sometimes called the devil or Lucifer or a lot of different names, but his character is revealed as the accuser of the brethren. In other words, what he wants to do is remind you of everything you have ever done wrong forever, over and over and over again, because if he can get you to live in past guilt, then you can’t dream kingdom dreams and you can’t make a difference for God’s kingdom. So then you can’t live in the present reality.
So what happens is this, I think sometimes the memory of your confessed sin produces guilt instead of gratitude for the forgiveness that you have received in Christ.
Let’s zoom out for a minute and let me talk about this. Our the turn of the 20th Century, a Russian psychologist and physician named Ivan Pavlov performed some experiments that won him a Nobel Prize. You remember this probably from a high school class. Dogs naturally salivate to food but Pavlov wanted to see if salivation could be caused by another stimulus. So do you remember what he did? He rang the bell before feeding them and he wanted to see if that by itself would cause salivation. And it did. And Pavlov referred to this learned relationship as a conditioned reflex. Now, to one degree or another, all of us are Pavlovian. We have consciously or subconsciously been conditioned our entire lives, so much of our behavior are conditioned reflexes. Let me see if I can explain this. I was having an interesting conversation with a friend a couple of weeks ago. Josh was telling me that every once in a while, he blacked out. Two or three times a year, when he sees something or hears something that is bloody or gruesome. This traces back to something that happened when he was very young. He had an experience that he didn’t go into a lot of detail about but he said somehow, he was subconsciously conditioned that he shut down if things get too gruesome. So he said one day he was driving with a friend and the friend had just had open-heart surgery and he started to describe the procedure and Josh was graciously sitting there listening but at one point, he knew, so he said, ‘I just want you to know I’m going to black out soon and I’ll be back in about 30 seconds and I’ll be ok.’ Sure enough, he blacked out, then he came back and his friend was like what in the world! It is a conditioned reflex! Now, some of these are normal and natural, like a blush, or laughter. But some of them are absolutely destructive. Like if someone, to drown their sorrows, begins drinking, maybe subtle at first but then begins to push the limits and it is almost like escaping to a place of drunkenness where that is how they handle the problems, almost like a circuit breaker that would blow a circuit to shut down, and they handle it the wrong way.
So what we’ve got to do in understand these conditioned reflexes. It is interesting to me that much of what Jesus taught, if you look at it from a Pavlovian perspective, is about reconditioning our reflexes. What did Jesus say? Love your enemies. Ok, that’s not natural. Pray for those who persecute you, bless those who curse you. If someone forces you to go one mile with them, go two miles with them. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek. Those aren’t natural reactions. Those are reactions that have been conditioned by the love of God, by the grace of God, by the Spirit of God. Are you with me?
Let’s look at Peter for just a second then we will come back to Romans 8. I think this is a wonderful picture of what no condemnation means. Do you remember when Peter denied Jesus three times? And Jesus predicted this when He said before the rooster crows three times, you will deny me. So Peter denies Jesus and the rooster crows. And in one of the accounts, it says that Jesus looked straight at Peter. I love that. He made eye contact with him. But it wasn’t a look of condemnation. I think it was Jesus’ way of saying, ‘Peter, don’t beat yourself, don’t say it is over, but look at me, look into my eyes, I love you and I believe in you. We are going to get past this and I’m going to use you to do incredible things for my kingdom, but don’t break eye contact with me, look at me.’ So Jesus maintained the relational connection by making eye contact with Peter. I had a thought one day as I read that account and it was this, I wonder if Peter felt a twinge of guilt every time he heard a rooster crow? My hunch is he did because it is the way we are wired. It is crazy the way certain sights, sounds and smells, different stimuli can stamp us in a way that triggers. In fact, Pastor Allen and I were in Minnesota, I was speaking there and we went by my grandparents old house and every time I smell lilacs, I kid you not, I am transported through time and space, I’m five years old in my grandparents back yard smelling their lilac bush. We went back there and sure enough it was still there. We are wired that way. If I hear You Got It by Roy Orbison, I’m on Lakeshore Drive driving north on a date with Lora, it is our song.
I think the reason we might not appreciate this is that most of us live in an urban area and there aren’t too many roosters in my neighborhood, but I think a couple years ago we were on a mission trip and I remember waking up and I’ll never forget it because it was like a rooster choir. There were more roosters on this island than people and the crazy thing is, they didn’t wait until it was dawn. It was 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning and you couldn’t shut it down. And it made me think, in the culture that Peter lived in, every morning was a reminder of the greatest mistake he’d ever made. Every morning, he would wake up and his auditory cortex was conditioned by his denial of Jesus. When Jesus needed him most Peter failed. The Bible says that Satan prowls around like a roaring lion, I think he also prances around like a crowing rooster and it’s almost like every morning as Peter woke up, cock-a-doodle do you loser! Hey, remember that night when Jesus needed you and you denied Him three times? Every day, he was conditioned hundreds of times. I don’t think I’m reading into this at all.
Now, fast forward to John 21 when Peter says, ‘I’m going out fishing.’ It could just be a casual statement, but I think it was Peter’s way of saying, ‘I’m probably disqualified as a disciple, I’m going to go back to my old way of life.’ There is nothing the enemy would have loved more than for Peter to spend the rest of his life fishing on the Sea of Galilee and wallowing in the mistakes that he had made. Do you remember what happened? Jesus showed up! He says, ‘Peter, do you love me?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Feed my sheep.’ ‘Peter, do you love me?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Feed my sheep.’ ‘Peter, do you love me?’ ‘You know I love you.’ At this point, Peter is almost offended by the fact that Jesus would ask him three times. But is it possible that Jesus knew something about conditioned reflexes before Ivan Pavlov? So three times, Jesus reconditions him, reaffirms him, ‘Do you love me?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Feed my sheep.’
Here’s what is interesting to me. Have you ever noticed when it happens? It could just be a minor detail or it could be pretty significant. It says in John 21, early in the morning. When do roosters crow? Early in the morning. I think what happened here is that up until this moment, the roosters crow would produce this conditioned reflex of guilt. Stick with me here. But from this day forward, when he heard that rooster crow, it was reconditioned by a different memory, a memory on a beach when Jesus loved him so much, he loved him so much, He said, ‘I’m not giving up on you, I’m coming after you! You are going to do this. I believe in you. We are in this thing together. Peter, I love you. You denied Me but I love you and I’m going to make you say you love Me three times because we are going to get to the bottom of whatever future guild or doubt you might have, whatever condemnation the enemy might speak to you, I want to make sure that from this day forward when you hear the rooster crow every morning, it is a reminder that my mercies are new every morning.’
Here’s the bottom line. It took a long time to say it but here it is. The accuser of the brethren wants to condition you with guilt. Jesus wants to recondition you with his grace.
Here is a simple equation, sin minus grace equals guilt. Sin plus grace equals gratitude.
Here’s what happens when you receive the free gift of grace that God offers. The sin that was in your life no longer produces guilt because it is forgiven. So now the memory of our sins, because of God’s grace, produces gratitude for the Son of God who went to the cross for us. That is where I think the victory is won or lost. I think that is where many of us, if we could just get that from here to here to here, it would change the way we live on a daily basis.
Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
Can I say this? I believe in counseling. I think everybody needs counseling. I’ve never met anybody who doesn’t need a little bit of marriage counseling, a little bit of life coaching, a little counseling when it comes to big decisions, when it comes to their past and the issues they have. I’ve never met anybody who couldn’t use a little counseling. But I think there are some problems that counseling cannot solve. There are some problems that can only be solved by The Counselor, by the Holy Spirit Himself, by getting into God’s presence and allowing the Holy Spirit into the crevices and corners of your heart, of your memories, of your past. And what you do is you go there and you invite Jesus into those places. You allow the Holy Spirit in. But some of us don’t want to go there. We don’t want to spend any time there so we just superficially deal with things and then we wonder why we live with this vague feeling of forgiveness or guilt at alternating times. And we’ve never reached the point where it is our present tense reality. Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
Last phrase, ‘in Christ Jesus,’ a phrase that is repeated hundreds of times throughout the New Testament. In my estimation, it is the most important phrase because really the bottom line is this – are you in Christ or out of Christ? Are you in or out? It is one or the other. 115 times in the book of Romans, are you in Christ?
How do you get in? Romans 10:9 says
9 If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.
In that moment that you put your faith in Christ, you are in Christ. The Bible says to as many as have received Him, to them He gave the power to become children of God. It is like you are adopted into the family of God. It is an incredible thing.
Last weekend, I had the privilege of officiating a wedding. I love that moment when vows are exchanged. And somehow in this mysterious, sovereign universe where God came up with this idea of marriage, here is this moment where a husband and a wife stand in front of each other and pledge to love one another in sickness and in health, for better for worse, for richer or for poorer, and somehow a covenant is established between a husband and a wife, and in that moment, two become one.
In the very same sense, as we prepare to celebrate communion in just a moment, communion is a covenant. Jesus said this cup is the new covenant in my blood. It is almost like Jesus is standing at the altar saying, ‘Listen, here is my vow to you, I showed how much I love you on the cross.’ Then it is up to us whether we enter into that covenant relationship with God. What I know is this – God wants a relationship with every one of us. What I know is this – your sins have been nailed to the cross but you’ve got to kneel at the foot of the cross and receive the gift that God is freely offering. You have to make that transaction happen by your faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. if you simply put your faith in Him, in that moment, your eternity changes.
I want to invite you as we celebrate communion at all of our locations this weekend, maybe you are here and you have been going to church a long time but you’ve never heard it that way, or something has clicked today and you have realized that there is a free gift available and in your heart something stirred, and that’s the Holy Spirit. I want to invite you to respond to the invitation that Jesus extended 2,000 years ago, to make sure that the victory He won 2,000 years ago is your present reality. It is not difficult. I’m going to lead us in prayer and maybe you can pray with me. As I thank the Lord for what He has done, you can pray along with me. Maybe for the first time this weekend, you can celebrate communion as an actual covenant that you have made with God.
Let’s pray together.
Lord, we come before You today and we humble ourselves before You acknowledging that we have sinned against a Holy God. God, we confess that sin. We don’t minimize our sinfulness, because to do so would minimize your amazing grace, the mercy that You have shown to us. God, we thank You for the promise of your Word, that if we confess our sin, You are faithful and just to forgive us of our sin and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. God, I thank You today that there is not a person here who has to walk out with any feeling of condemnation whatsoever because there is no condemnation if we are in Christ Jesus. So Lord for those who don’t know where they stand with You, for those who have been on the outside looking in, I pray that in this moment, they would take a step of faith, that they would put their full faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, that they would bow the knee at the foot of the cross and say they belong to You and surrender their life to your Lordship and receive the grace and mercy You have offered, with a heart filled with so much joy and a peace that passes understanding. Lord, we say thank You, thank You, thank You that there is now no condemnation for them that are in Christ Jesus. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
Ministry Transcription
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