2001 Larry Huntsperger Peninsula Bible Fellowship

©2001 Larry Huntsperger Peninsula Bible Fellowship

6/3/01

Proofs Of Sonship Pt. 2

Romans 8:15-17

6/3/01 Proofs Of Sonship Pt. 2

One of the many wonderful things

about our being able to get together every week like this

is knowing that, when I discover I have said something the week before

that may have been heard by you

in a way that I did not intend for it to be heard,

we can always jump back into it the next week and deal with it.

That might have happened

with something I shared with you last Sunday.

We are studying the final few verses

of the 8^th chapter of the book or Romans.

It is a section of the letter in which Paul is pulling together

the main truths he wants us to take away

from the first 8 chapters of this letter.

He does this by doing three things:

1. He gives us 5 proofs of the true child of God.

2. He gives the true child of God 5 powerful sources of encouragement.

3. And then he concludes with 5 things we must never forget about our heavenly Father.

Last week we started looking at the first of those three,

the 5 proofs of the true child of God.

We spent about half of our time

talking about how difficult it is

for us to correctly evaluate where other people really are in their relationship to God.

We looked at several of our Lord’s warnings

about the dangers of trying to do this.

But then we moved on

to realize that,

even though we may sometimes have difficulty knowing with absolute certainty

whether other people around us are true believers,

we certainly can know about ourselves.

And, in fact,

the passage we are now studying

in Romans 8:12-17

was written by Paul to equip us to do just that.

In these verses

Paul takes 5 evidences of the true Christian

and offers them to us as a kind of Biblical mirror in which we can see ourselves.

What I should have anticipated last week but failed to

is the danger that always accompanies offering Christians any form of list.

There is something terrifying that sometimes happens in our minds

when we are confronted with a list.

All of the sudden

everything we know to be true

is instantly erased from our thinking

and the only thing left staring us in the face on our mental computer screen

is THE LIST!

And, we suddenly find ourselves believing

that, if we do not measure up exactly

to every item on the list perfectly

every second of every day of our lives,

we have failed THE TEST,

and there is now no hope left for us.

This might have happened to some of you last week.

If it did, please accept my apologies.

Last week we looked at the first 2

of Paul’s 5 evidences of the true believer.

The first was that the true believer lives

with an ever-present internal conflict

between the impulses of the flesh

and the leadership of our new spirit within.

The presence of that conflict,

that spirit-level tension within us,

is the first great confirmation of our union with Christ.

I think most of us did alright with that one.

We could look at ourselves,

and see within ourselves that kind of struggle going on -

a deep longing within our spirit

for a life pleasing to our King,

and the sometimes strong resistance

of our mistrained physical bodies,

warring against that hunger for purity.

But the second evidence to true sonship

given to us by Paul

may have caused more confusion.

The second evidence we looked at

is given to us in Romans 8:14

where Paul says,

ROM 8:14 For all who are being led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God.

The true child of God lives with an ever-growing awareness

of the life and leadership of the Holy Spirit within.

And the problem came

when I suggested several Biblical proofs

of the presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives.

- The Holy Spirit brings a whole new sensitivity to right and wrong into our lives.

- The Spirit gives the Word of God a life, and a power, and an authority we’ve never known before, feeding our spirit in a remarkable way.

- The Spirit brings an awareness of the love of God unlike anything we’ve ever known before.

- The Spirit gives us a longing to live a life that pleases and honors our King.

Now it is absolutely true

that all of those are works that only the Spirit of God can accomplish in our lives,

and as such,

they serve as strong confirmations of His presence within us.

And it is also true

that the true believer

will be able to look at his or her own life

and see evidences of those works of the Holy Spirit within.

But the danger comes when I take those things

and put them into a list form

and that LIST mentality suddenly takes over within us.

You’ll know that happened

if you went away from hearing those evidences of the Holy Spirit within

believing that what I had said was that,

if you do not exhibit every evidence

24 hours a day,

7 days a week,

it proves you do not have the Holy Spirit,

which in turn proves you are not really a child of God.

That is what LISTS do within us.

Rather than encouraging us

and drawing our spirits closer to our Lord,

they create fear, and a sense of judgement and condemnation.

And that is their great danger

in a teaching situation.

So, before we go any farther with this list,

let me clarify-

With everything we will be looking at here,

Paul is not telling us that

every true believer lives in the constant, conscious reality of these truths 24/7,

and if you don’t do that

then you are not really a Christian.

What he is doing

is offering us mental protections

designed to help ward off the lies with which Satan so often seeks to defeat us.

When Satan comes at us with his accusations,

telling us that IF WE WERE TRULY A CHRISTIAN

we would not feel this way,

or feel that way,

or we would not fight with this weakness or that weakness,

or we would certainly not fail,

or doubt,

or fear,

these evidences are given to us by Paul

as certain reminders of the truth.

These provide some of the ammunition

with which we can say to ourselves

and to our enemy,

“NO! I know the truth. I know who I am,

and I know who my God is,

and I know that in response to my simple faith in the death of His Son for my sins,

I am now, and will forever more be His child.

I can not offer my King perfect performance in this life,

nor does He require it of me.

I can offer only a heart that longs for that performance

and trust Him to continue reshaping me

step by step, increasingly into greater conformity to the image of my Lord.”

You see, these evidences of true conversion

are Paul’s defense against

what he knew the world of religion would do to the message of Christ.

The world of religion

creates a system of external hoops

through which a person can jump,

hoops that will then guarantee our union with God.

In other words, religion trains us to look at the external actions

for our security with God.

But through this passage

Paul turns our eyes off of the externals

and tells us that the true confirmation of our union with God

will be found not in the externals,

but rather in what is going on inside us,

at the spirit level,

in out personal interaction with our Creator.

They are given

not to create fear,

but rather just the opposite-

to create a strong sense of security in the true child of God

in the face of our fluctuating external performance.

And with that as clarification,

lets move on to the third evidence of the life of Christ within us.

It is found in Romans 8:15-16:

ROM 8:15 For you have not received a spirit of slavery leading to fear again, but you have received a spirit of adoption as sons by which we cry out, "Abba! Father!"

ROM 8:16 The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we are children of God,...

OK, the first three confirmations of the real things are theses:

1. The true child of God lives with a continual tension between our new, holy heart,

and our ongoing impulses of the flesh.

2. The true child of God is indwelt by the Spirit of God.

3. And then, #3, the true child of God

has received a spirit of adoption,

a spirit-awareness within us

that prompts us to reach out to God,

not just as the almighty Creator of the universe,

but as our Papa,

our Father.

The word Paul has selected here

with which he describes the cry of the Christian’s spirit to God

is a fascinating word.

It is the word “Abba!”

It appears 3 times in the Bible.

The first time it appears is in the Gospel of Mark 14:36,

a passage in which Jesus addresses God by calling Him, “Abba”.

And, in fact, it is not in a public prayer,

but rather at that point of greatest intimacy between Father and Son,

in Jesus’ agonizing prayer to God in the garden,

just prior to His crucifixion.

The other two times

it is used by Paul

to describe the response of the Christian’s spirit to God.

And I want to be sure we do not miss what we are seeing here.

Paul is telling us that our faith in Christ

results in our entering into

the same intimate Father/child union

between us and God Himself

as Christ Himself shared with the Father

during His time here on earth.

Abba is a word filled with intense feeling.

It is not a word used to communicate formal respect,

it is the Greek word

used by a small child

as that child climbs up into daddy’s lap.

It is a title filled with absolute trust,

intimacy,

familiarity,

and security.

This is not the term used to speak of “the Great Father of Mankind.”

This is the term used to describe...

well, what Paul calls “the spirit of adoption”.

This is when the Eternal,

the All Powerful,

the Infinite

becomes personal,

and accessible,

and intimate,

and real.

This is what happens

when we look not into the mind of God to see what He thinks,

but what happens when we look into the Heart of God to see what He loves,

and discover to our amazement

that what He loves is us.

Any man-made religious system

can peddle to its adherents

the confident assurance

that they can be “saved”

if the followers faithfully jump through

whatever hoops

the system has established.

But only the Spirit of God

can touch us

in a away that assures our spirit that God is our Papa.

His Spirit... “ testifies with our spirit that we are children of God...”

And this truth, by the way,

is one that I consider to be

at the very heart of all truly healthy Christian prayer.

I have sometimes heard Christians talk about our need

to “storm the gates of heaven” with our prayers,

and to rally more and more people

to pray for some great need.

If we ever find ourselves believing

that we must storm the gates of heaven

in order to gain access to God,

or to get Him to notice us,

or if we think we must somehow amass

some huge hoard of people

before God will listen to us,

we have severely misunderstood

the true nature of the Christian’s relationship to God.

Let me try to give it to you in a little illustration

and maybe it will be easier to see.

I want you to picture this gymnasium cleared of all the chairs,

with me standing directly in the center.

And then, over on one side of the gym

are all of you good people,

and, in fact, every person

who has ever been a part of our fellowship.

And each of you are struggling with some question,

or some issue in your life

that you would like my input on.

There is this great chorus of voices...

“Larry, I have a question for you...

Larry, I could use your help...

Larry, what do you think about...”

And then, over on the other side of the gym

there stands just one person,

my Joni Sue,

and she is saying,

“Papa, could you help me, please!”

Where do you think my mind and my heart will turn?

1PE 3:12 "For the eyes of the Lord are upon the righteous, And His ears attend to their prayer...”

To which you say,

“But I’m not righteous!”

To which I respond,

“Then you are telling me that Christ’s death

was not a sufficient payment for your sins,

and He did not really remove your sins from you as far as the east is from the west?

The healthiest prayers we ever pray

are those that begin with the truth,

those that begin with our spirit crying out, “Papa! My Papa! I need You - please hear my prayer.”

I know it is sometimes very difficult

for the Holy Spirit to break through

all of those fears and misconceptions we bring with us into our union with God

so that we can here Him calling us, “My beloved child.”

And I know we can so quickly

and so easily forget our Papa/child relationship with Him.

But I know, too, that it is this truth to which the Spirit of God is ever moving us.

And when you find within yourself

that Papa-response to God within your spirit,

recognize it and embrace it as the truth it really is.

The fourth of these 5 evidences of true faith

is closely linked to #3.

In fact, it is found in the same sentence.

ROM 8:16 The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we are children of God,

ROM 8:17 and if children, heirs also, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ...

If I were to rephrase this 4^th evidence of true faith,

I would say that it is the confidence God’s Spirit places within our spirit

to make today’s choices

in the light of our eternal union with our God.

You see,

what Paul is getting at here

is that, because God has allowed the Christian to see beyond the grave,

and because what we have seen there

is ourselves living in the presence of our Lord forever,

that vision beyond the grave

has a profound affect on the values we bring to the choices we make each day.

In other words,

something has taken place within the true child of God

that encourages us to make daily decisions

from an eternal perspective.

And this is especially true

when we find God’s Spirit giving us the courage

and the strength to make decisions

that result in life being harder for us here and now,

because we know that here and now is not all there is.

Which brings us to Paul’s 5^th evidence of the life of Christ within us,

ROM 8:17 ... we suffer with Him so that we may also be glorified with Him.

The true child of God will find

that his union with Christ

brings into his life a measure of suffering

that would not have existed

had Christ not been present within him.

And because that 5^th evidence opens the way to the 5 pillars of encouragement in the next section of the chapter,

we’ll save it for next week.