5/31/26 Romans 8:1-17 “Are You Perfect?”

28 May 5/31/26 Romans 8:1-17 “Are You Perfect?”

5/31/26    Romans 8:1-17          “Are You Perfect?”

I believe I have mentioned this a few times in the past.  We live in a world where no matter what happens, we have to assign blame when things aren’t right.  I remember a couple of years back a young gentleman missed the last shot in a basketball game and they lost by one point.  People were quick to point out that this lad had lost the game.  They never stopped to consider all the other shots that were missed up to that point.  The whole team lost the game not just the one player.  I think we all know this is true in sports but it’s also true in other places.  Think of the times you have blamed someone for being late or for spending too much or for not helping enough.  If you take a step back and look at just about any situation like this, you will usually find that it’s not all that one person’s fault.  Most of the time there are other factors involved.  One of the things that would be nice in situations like this is to be able to do something over.  If you get the opportunity for a do over, do it.  However, most of the time do overs aren’t possible.  Once something is said, it cannot be unsaid.  Today, we are going to look at the verses that led up to last week’s sermon in Romans.  Let’s see if we can find what really makes this wonderful Christian faith work.

I think that we have all seen the situation where a young couple and their family are very involved in the church.  Then something seems to change.  They start to hang out with the wrong people or end up in bars every night and the next thing you know, they are in divorce court.  They let the world come between them and Jesus.  Sin is sometimes well disguised and hard to recognize.  Then there is the family who has been faithful to God and their church until the children start in sports.  They end up at tournaments just about every Sunday and the next thing you know, you rarely see them in church.  When the kids graduate, we never see the parents again.  Then there is the story of a man who loved to fish and he lived real close to a great fishing lake.  Unfortunately, his church where he was a regular attender was right between him and the lake.  Well, due to work, he didn’t have much time for fishing.  So he would wait until services started on Sunday and he would sneak his boat past the church so no one would see him.  People will go through all kinds of anguish just so they don’t come to church.  I’m sure that you can add various stories of your own.  The point is that we aren’t very forgiving when we find out about these things or at least the people who do them don’t think we are that forgiving.  This is what Paul is addressing in our reading.

Let us begin with verse one which is very important.  It says, “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”  There is no condemnation, no condemnation.  The people Paul is addressing here are pretty much new Christians.  As I said last week, they were all pretty much new Christians at this point.  They are having trouble with the concept of being saved.  They aren’t sure if they are still saved even though they continue to sin in one way or another. And I think that this is an issue that clouds us even today.  I will try my best to clarify this.

Once you accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, you are saved forever.  You never have to worry about it again.  The only way you aren’t saved is if you renounce Jesus and that is an argument that we could have all day with the Baptists.  They say once saved always saved and there are no exceptions.  I think they are wrong.  I think you can renounce God but it is in the rare case.

If we have not renounced Jesus, then we will be saved no matter what.  Then you may ask, “What happens when I sin?”  When you sin, it has already been taken care of by what Jesus did on the cross.  He died for your sin today, tomorrow and the next day.  This is only if you are a Christian.  If you don’t know Christ then you have no life to begin with because you are apart from Jesus.  This isn’t harsh or anything else.  It is just the way it is and we cannot change it no matter how many laws we pass against Jesus Christ.

Now what happens when you sin and you die before you get a chance to confess?  Are you still saved?  Of course you are.  Jesus will not turn His back on His people.  Here is what I mean.  When you sin and you don’t know Jesus, then it really doesn’t matter because you aren’t saved anyway.  Therefore, no matter what you do when you don’t know Christ, you are sinning because you live apart from Jesus.  But when you have been saved things are different.  When you sin after being saved, you know that you have sinned.  It is now built into you that you have the knowledge of what is sin and what isn’t.  Again, that is just the way it is.

But once Christ is inside of you, then when you sin you know it and have remorse.  You want to get back right with Jesus.  One way we do this through confession.  That is why confession is so important all the time.  If you sin and die before you have a chance to confess, you are still ok because you know you have done wrong.  You just haven’t confessed yet.  Many times you confess right away as you confess silently to yourself.  You know what is wrong.  Sin will never take away your salvation.  You are still part of God’s family even if you don’t have time to confess before you die.  The only thing that will take away your salvation is if you blatantly reject God.  Then you are on your own and may the Lord have mercy on you because you will really need it.

That is basically how that works and it is all according to grace.  Years ago some religious experts were gathered in a city to discuss their various religious beliefs.  One Christian finally asked the question, “What is the one thing that distinguishes Christianity from all other religions?”  No one knew the answer or maybe they just didn’t want to expose the answer.  The man came back and said, “Christianity is the only religion in the world where you have grace.”  What a powerful statement!  All other religions you have to work your way to heaven.  Muslims have to earn their way, Eastern religions have to earn their way, and Jehovah’s Witness have to earn their way.  When you have to earn your way, who is to say how much you have to do or what you have to do.  It’s always arbitrary according to human judgment.  All we Christians have to do to get to have this is accept Jesus and the grace He offers.  All you have to do is accept.  That’s it!  And any other religion may join us if they accept the grace of Jesus Christ which is offered to all people of the world.

Sometimes we get a little mixed up when we talk about our worthiness and grace.  There isn’t one person here today who is worthy of God’s grace.  I have heard many people tell me that the things they have done are so bad that they aren’t worthy of God’s grace.  We are talking about grace here and not worthiness.  Jesus Christ offers us a chance to come into His grace.  He did this when He died on the cross.  Jesus died for all sin and not just yours and yours and yours.  He died for all sin, once and for all.  This is the kind of God that we are worshipping.

Grace is free and for all.  All we have to do is accept it and this is where some people fail.  Some think that by accepting God’s grace, we are then working for it but that’s not true.  This is our free will to accept or reject God.  This is our choice and this is not works based.  Anyway, grace is the defining element of our faith.  Accept God’s grace today and begin a new life that is hard to imagine if you haven’t been there before.

Because we have this grace, because we have Jesus in our lives all the time we no longer have to worry about being perfect.  Have you ever thought about what it is like to be a part of another religion, one where your salvation depends on some arbitrary work rules?  Can you imagine what it is like to try to be pleasing to a god who is never pleased?  At the time Paul wrote this, there were many religions in Rome and they were all works based.  How many sacrifices were necessary for your salvation?  Sometimes they were called upon to sacrifice members of their own families.  Some were called to do x amount of good deeds to get to their so-called heaven.

This is no different than today.  How many people must a Muslim kill before he reaches their version of heaven?  Or how many people must a person witness to in order to get into a Jehovah’s Witness heaven?  Or how many good deeds must a Mormon do?  The list goes on and on and these people will never, never satisfy their so-called god because there is always more to do.  In a work based religion, you will never satisfy your god and you in turn will always be unsatisfied.  That is why smiles are the exception and not the rule there.

With Jesus Christ, we never have to worry about being perfect.  Jesus will accept you as you are.  It doesn’t matter how broken you are.  It doesn’t matter how many good works you do and you surely don’t have to kill anyone to get to heaven.  All you have to do is believe.  You will never have to look over your shoulder again to see if you are good enough because you are all good enough.  And we can ‘praise the Lord’ for that.

I case you haven’t noticed, I’m repeating myself a bit.  So we have the defining piece our faith in grace and therefore we no longer have to try to be perfect.  This in turn helps us to no longer live in sin.  This is a little harder because we live in a world controlled by Satan so we live in a sinful world.  But what this means is that because we know Jesus Christ as our personal savior, we can now do anything we want.  If you want to go rob a bank, then go rob a bank.  In Christianity you can do whatever you want, there are no rules of behavior or different ways to earn your way to heaven.  If you choose, then you can live in sin.

The difference is that you don’t want to live in sin the way you used to because you know that sin is against God’s will.  God doesn’t want you to rob banks anymore.  He doesn’t want you to smoke cigarettes or do drugs.  God wants you to follow His lead but you have free will to do whatever you want.  Once you know Jesus, then you will only want to do what is pleasing to Him.  You won’t want to live in sin anymore.

This was quite a change for the new Roman Christians.  They were used to having a firm set of rules that they had to follow or else bad things would happen to them.  Suddenly, they didn’t have to follow rules and they felt different.  They found out that the only thing they really wanted to do was to please God.

It’s the same way with us.  We no longer want to do the real bad things we used to do so we try to quit and amend our ways so that we can please God.  Everything we do should be revolved around trying to please God.  The problem, especially in an evil world like ours, is that people don’t want to give up their bad ways because they think they are good.  They don’t want their conscious bothering them.  So they come up with all these false accusations about Christians.  Remember, you are either for God or against God and there is no middle ground.  When you get to meet God, you will not negotiate.  He is in charge and we should praise the Lord for that.  God is perfect in all ways so you don’t have to be.

And this leads us right back to, once again, where we have to accept this grace.  Just think of it like this.  I would like nothing better than to be able to give each and every person here $100.  I bet if I did that every week, it wouldn’t be long before we had to have 2 services, then three and four.  Anyway, all I would do is get a stack of $100 bills and place them here on the railing.  Then I would tell you to come and pick up your $100.  The only thing you have to do to get it is to accept it by picking it up.  If you don’t pick it up, you don’t get it.  It’s the same way with grace.  You have to accept it.  And you do that by confessing, repenting and asking Jesus to live in your heart.  It’s not complicated.  It is very, very easy.

I think that the key to this reading comes right back again to the first verse we read.  There will be no condemnation by God.  The devil condemns you, not God.  There is nothing you can do to make God love you any less and He will never condemn you for what you have done.  We have to remember when Paul said, “We have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.”  There is not one of you who is without sin and there is not one of you that God doesn’t love anyway.  Isn’t that great!

You see, God wants everyone to accept His grace so you can quit trying to be perfect which is impossible, except maybe just the choice few of us.  Anyway, he wants us to have and know all this so that you don’t have to live in sin any more.  Jesus Christ wants you to live with Him in this world and the next.  He has a special place for each one of you.  He has a special love for you and only you.  Jesus has thought of it all.  All you have to do is put your whole trust, your faith in Him.  Go to Jesus today and ask Him to be the ruler of your life.  Thank you, Jesus, for first loving us.  Let’s pray.