We continue a series of lessons on the book of Romans. We have talked about Salvation, Justification and Sanctification. Paul teaches that when we call for help from God, we can begin to look to the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Paul reminds us that the believer is liberated, set free from the slavery of sin and death through Christ Jesus.
The Holy Spirit dwells within us and enables us to push sin aside. But it is not enough. We cannot shed our sinful nature. Jesus fills in the blanks. The Holy Spirit guides us and the sacrifice of Jesus builds a bridge of grace to God. Our sins are forgiven as Jesus pays the price we cannot pay.
Living in Christ is living a servant life; a life of love in action. The road to righteousness can be found in the Great Commandments: Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength, and love your neighbor as yourself. That love is cultivated and nourished through prayer and obedience. It is doing His will. Such is life in Christ.
Today, the message of Paul to the Romans reaches a more upbeat tone. Having learned that we are not capable of coming to God under our own steam, having accepted that we must call out to Him and be nourished not only by the help and comfort of the Holy Spirit, but also the grace that comes from God through the sacrifice of his own Son; having sought these relationships through prayer, obedience and servanthood, now we can take a look at what it’s like to be in the family of God.
I know about family. I just went to a family reunion a couple weeks ago in Society Hill. It had Griggs and O’Neals and sometimes there is even a Farrar or two there. They like it when I show up. I’m Farrar O’Neal Griggs. Everybody claims me. I don’t know the family tree very well, but I know that Griggs have been around Society Hill for a couple hundred years.
I know about family. I come from a long line, deep and wide, of military service. This is another form of family. Me, my dad, his dad, his dad, my siblings (both sexes), my cousins, my children, my wife’s dad, my inlaws. Everyone wore a uniform for a time; several made it a career. Everything but the Coast Guard, and I have a daughter interning at a Coast Guard base this summer, so who knows.
I know about family. I have three daughters and a son. I have a son in law and a grandson just two years old. I have sweated tears of love for thirty years to help them onto tricycles and bicycles and cars and boats and airplanes…and even helicoptors. I see now through my grandson that my job as a family member will never end; it just changes duties from time to time.
But reading about Jesus, which is also the story of God’s love for us, I realize I don’t know so much about family after all. God knows about family. The Psalmist tells us that God our Father knows all our ways, that He knows our every word before it is on our tongues, that we can’t hide, outrun or surprise God, that His Spirit surrounds us. Paul tells us that if we are led by the Spirit, we are sons of God. We say Abba, or Daddy, to the creator of all creation. We are God’s children. Talk about a family tree! Living in Christ is being blessed with a genealogy that traces to Adam himself, and more importantly…to Jesus Himself.
Well, I do know something about inheritance law. I have practiced it for most of my law career. I know that you can disinherit a child. I know that children is an inclusive term. It’s not just blood. It can be adoption too. If you want to talk blood, you use the word issue. If you want something to pass completely without a string or condition, you leave it to so-and-so and her heirs. That is vesting language that cures the defects and clears the doubts and it’s practically universal in American and English law. So when Paul says that we are children, he’s letting the adopted ones in, and when he says heirs and co-heirs with Christ, that’s pretty much the jackpot. Those are the magic words that make the Will work, get it into probate and stand up to scrutiny from those who would object to the result.
I know something about adoption too. I really do. My oldest child is adopted. She is not blood. In the eyes of the law, she is not “issue,” but “children.” For a short time, I thought she would be the only child I ever had. Like Timothy was for Paul, she was the alternative to being childless. I prayed and prayed and prayed for that child. And one day, there she was. I know about adoption, because I know first hand that love does not come from a strand of DNA. It flies straight from the heart like an arrow shot from a longbow and it comes in the time it might take to form the name of that child on one’s lips. For me, that name was Rebekah. Is such a love stronger or weaker than the love one feels for a child born of the union of genetics or subsequent marriage? Of course not. It is the same. Ask God. Paul says that “creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.” Ask God. It was for you and me that God came to earth and lived as a man. It was for you and me that he suffered temptation. It was for you and me that he endured the most barbaric form of execution in the known world and bore all the sin of all time into that sinless, selfless heart. My adopted daughter is precious to me, but never have I had to sacrifice for her or any of my children the way my Savior sacrificed for me.
How far have we come? We were slaves to sin. Now we are sons and daughters of God! We were cursed to death. Now we will inherit as co-heirs with Christ Himself! How breathtaking and life-changing is life in Christ! Through the overpowering and gracious love of God, we call him Daddy, claiming a status equal to a natural birthright. Led by the Holy Spirit, we must share in Christ’s sufferings, says Paul. Grace is free, but not cheap. If you come into the family, you give back to it with love, and as Jesus has taught us, the Christian life comes with burdens. But sharing in those burdens means we also share in Christ’s glory! Paul says compared to the glory that is to be revealed, the present suffering barely gets on the scale.
What does it mean to be in God’s family? I think about it this way. I watch my grandson when my wife comes through the door. He stops everything and runs to her screaming “my MiMi.” It’s even more pronounced when his mother gets home from work. He runs to her and wraps his little arms around her leg. He calls her name: “Mama.” You can see it in his eyes and you can hear it in his voice. He feels perfectly safe. He is happy. He is home. He is part of a family. This is God’s grand design. It gives us a glimpse of how we will feel in glory. It even gives us a glimpse of how we can feel right now in these pews or at home reading Scripture, or in prayer. We cry Abba…Daddy. We are His children, adopted into the family of God himself.
How big is this? Paul says that all creation groans as in childbirth as it waits for the coming of Christ in glory. We are reminded by Paul that Adam’s sin left not only mankind, but indeed the whole creation, cursed into decay. This is not the way it could have been. This is not the way it will be. The whole creation: you, me, birds, beasts, rocks, trees, plants, the sun and the stars, looks forward to that final resurrection when all is restored and harmony exists in every way. Paul reminds us that it is what we hope for. And that hope is a vibrant, expectant, believing hope, a way of living and doing life.
This passage is so rich that it’s hard to catch all the nuggets Paul gives to us. But don’t miss this one. There is also teaching here on the end times, or eschatology. Genesis 1:1 begins with “In the beginning, God…” The Gospel of John reminds us that in that beginning was the Word, and that Word was Jesus. In Romans, Paul opens our eyes toward the end times, saying that we groan inwardly and await eagerly for that time when Jesus returns, for that time when we believers as firstfruits will be redeemed in body to re-unite with our souls. This is God moving across the pages of history, writing His holy name upon its depth and breadth until, as Omar Khayyam puts it, “the last syllable of recorded time.”
We are already in God’s family. We can feel that right here with our church family. We can feel it at home and in the marketplace with our neighbor sharing the Word, sharing our lives and experiences. Even better, the stage is set for the future. We know we can count on it. We hope for that which we know is there, even though we cannot see it. But then, we can, can’t we? We just need to know where to look for His kingdom. It’s in the Sacraments that we remember and celebrate together as God’s people. It’s in the eyes of puppy dogs and kittens and toddlers who call for “Daddy”. It’s in the song of an elderly church member still faithful after fifty years of worship services. It’s in the hands of kitchen helpers cutting up finger foods for Vacation Bible School
“For inasmuch as you did it unto the least of these, my brethren, you did it unto me.”
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