3/2/08 - Lent 4 - Romans 8:1-10

YOU ARE BEING CONTROLLED
- You were bound by the control of sin
- You are now bound by the control of the Spirit

In the American Edition of Martin Luther’s works, there are 54 volumes worth of his sermons, lectures, papers, letters, discussions, books, and the like. And there are many more of his sermons and lectures and writings that have not been preserved for us. But out of that massive body of work, Luther himself only considered three things worth keeping: his translation of the Bible into the German language, the catechisms, and a book called “The Bondage of the Will.” This book was written in response to an article entitled: “The Freedom of the Will” in which a well-known theologian of the day claimed that people were able to choose and decide to come to faith if they wanted to because they had a “free will.” The title of Luther’s book gives away his response. And although “The Bondage of the Will” really is a tough read for a couple of different reasons, Luther’s point, based on Scripture, is that your will is never free. It is either bound by sin or bound by the Spirit. There is no in between. There is no neutral ground. Your will - your ability to decide and choose - is controlled, whether for good or for bad.
But this is not going to be a book report. And this is far from a scholarly discussion on an intellectual topic. This is a very important concept to understand as Christians. Because it has to do with our salvation. And it has to do with our sermon text for today in Romans 8. Listen to what Paul says about the bondage of our wills: “Those controlled by the sinful nature cannot please God. You, however, are controlled not by the sinful nature but by the Spirit.” You are being controlled. Right now as we speak. And everyone around you is being controlled. An unbeliever is being controlled by sin and a believer is being controlled by the Spirit. Either way, the will is not absolutely free to do whatever it wants.
And this is not a new concept from Scripture. You’ve heard it before and you will hear it again now, that when the Lord brought you to faith, he did all of the work. Your will had nothing to do with it. You did not choose the Lord, you did not decide to accept him in your heart, because you couldn’t! You were controlled by sin as an unbeliever! And Scripture makes that clear in a variety of different ways. “You did not choose me,” Jesus said, “but I chose you” (John 15:16). “When you were dead in your sins… God made you alive with Christ Jesus” (Col. 2:13). The Lord “called you out of darkness and into his wonderful light” (1 Peter 2:9). You did not do anything for your salvation. You did not cooperate in any way. God chose you, God made you alive, God called you out of darkness… You did not do a thing. In fact, you wouldn’t have been able to do a thing even if you were given a chance.
Does that disturb you a little bit? It’s disturbs me. It hurts my pride. We wouldn’t have been able to do anything to believe in Christ even if you were given the chance. That disturbs us because we tend to think of ourselves as relatively good people, don’t we? We like to think that, if given the chance, we would have eventually come to faith in Christ, we would make the right decision. If we were given the chance to read the Bible or hear the gospel message, we would like to think that we would make the right choice. No you wouldn’t. You would not have decided to believe in Jesus on your own because as an unbeliever you were controlled by sin! You were completely captivated by it. Even if you were given the chance to read the Bible and hear the gospel message, your sinful mind would have rejected it. And it did! Because “the sinful mind is hostile to God. It does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so.” So not only does a mind controlled by sin refuse to believe in Christ, it couldn’t believe even if it were given the chance! And you can see that played out in many people living right now. There are many scholars of the Bible - professors of religion, spiritual leaders of denominations, scholars of biblical languages - who know the Bible backwards and forward, but they still do not believe in Jesus as their Savior. They have been given plenty of “chances,” if you will, because their professions are in based on the Word of God, but they are still bound by sin. They do not obey God’s Word nor can they do so.
And that is true for every person in this world the moment they were conceived. The moment we were conceived in our mothers’ wombs, we were bound by sin. We were controlled from the start. And we have a hard time with that teaching, especially in this country - because we don’t want to be controlled, we’re proud of being free! “Don’t tell me what I can’t do! If you tell me I can’t do something, I’m going to do it just to prove you wrong!” That’s the way we think. That’s the way our culture talks. “You can do it yourself! If you put your mind to it you can do anything! If you think positively and strive to reach your full potential, nothing will be impossible!” Nice words to help your self-esteem, but words that are completely contrary to the Bible when it comes to faith. Even though we want to think we would be bright enough to choose Christ on our own, that is simply not the case. You could not and you cannot do it. And simply by thinking you might be able to pull it off if given a fair chance is ripping the glory away from the Lord. You are giving yourself too much credit. Because in fact, we can’t give ourselves any credit at all. We were bound by sin. Sin controlled us. And there was no way we could escape its grasp on our own.
Of course, now as you sit here at this point of your life, you are a Christian. You believe in Jesus as your Savior. And because of that you are bound by sin no longer, “Because through Christ Jesus the control of the Spirit of life set you free from the control of sin and death.” You have been set free from the control of sin by Christ Jesus. He broke the chains of sin by living a perfect life, he nullified the death penalty of sin by dying in our place, and he shattered the control of sin by leaving our sins nailed to the cross. The apostle Paul puts it like this in our text: God sent “his own Son in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering.” In the Old Testament a sin offering was needed to purify a sinner from any guilt or uncleanness that the sin had caused. Paul calls Jesus our sin offering. He purified and cleansed us from our guilt and our uncleanness by taking on the likeness of a human being and then giving up that life for our sins. So sin no longer controls us. We are no longer forced to do what it wants us to do. We are now controlled by the Spirit.
That’s right: you still do not have an absolutely free will. You as a Christian are not free to do whatever you feel like. You have been freed from sin but now you are controlled by the Spirit. What that means is: what you do is motivated by the Holy Spirit now instead of sin. What you do is prompted by the Holy Spirit instead of sin. What you do is powered and influenced by the Holy Spirit instead of sin. You have a new life - bound by the Holy Spirit! And that’s a good thing! It’s a good thing to be bound in that way. Because remember: there is no neutral ground. There is no such thing as a completely “free will.”
Now some people will say that we have a free will on this earth. In a way that is true. God has given you a “free will” (if you want to use that term) to decide what shoes to put on today, where to walk in them, and how fast to get there. The Lord has given you those decisions and choices in this life. But in reality, everything you do as a Christians is still controlled by the Spirit. You are not forced to do those things, but everything is influenced by the Spirit. Everything you say and do is for the glory of the Lord and out of love for Christ. So even in those “free” decisions that you make, the Holy Spirit still prompts and motivates and powers those actions. You are bound by the Spirit. Or even better: you are captivated by him.
We are captivated by the Spirit. We cannot help but live for him “Because those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires.” You want to do what the Lord asks of you, right? You want to live for Christ, you want to thank him for everything he’s given you. That’s the control of the Spirit working in you. That’s his influence and powerful motivation. But then, of course, you look at your life and you notice that your mind isn’t always set on what the Spirit desires. Your know that your actions don’t always reflect the name that you carry. That’s your old sinful self trying to drag you back down. That sinful self is always trying to chain you up again and bring you back under its control. Do not give in. Do not succumb to those temptations. And ask the Lord for forgiveness when it does happen. And that doesn’t mean you stop being a Christian when you fall back into a sin. Every Christian falls back. We will not reach perfection until heaven. But those lapses are dangerous. They will get worse and more frequent if you do not constantly fight against them. And the only way you can constantly fight against sin is with the help of the Spirit. The one who has brought you to faith, the one who controls you, is the only one who can help you fight off the sinful nature from which you have been freed. And he promises to help you do that only in his Word.
I realize that this is a deeper topic than what we normally discuss, but it’s an important thing to know that you are controlled. For the good. For your good. And more importantly, that’s the way Paul talks here in our sermon text for today. And so although you might not ever read Martin Luther’s “Bondage of the Will,” I hope that you at least understand what that title means. I pray that the Lord has opened your hearts to the words of Romans 8: helping you to understand the utter hopelessness of our condition when controlled by sin, but also revealing to you the complete joy of being controlled by the Spirit. Because this entire discussion comes down to this basic truth: the bondage of our wills by sin was leading us to death. But because of Christ, the bondage of our wills by the Spirit will lead us to life everlasting.
Amen.

“You were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.” - 1 Cor. 6:11