Road Trippin With Rachael

Have you ever considered what it actually means to rejoice? Is it the musical part of worship on a Sunday morning? Does it happen only when life is going well? What about when life if hard?

Today, I want to look at Romans 8, as I believe that this passage of scripture answers the question – although it is not the only passage that gives us the rationale for what rejoicing is, it is the one that I am choosing to primarily concentrate on within our Christ in the Carols series that we have been doing throughout the month of December.

You can catch up on all the fun by searching www.roadtrippinwithrachael.com or by checking out my YouTube channel Road Trippin With Rachael, and included there are my lessons that take us through Advent as well.

There Is No Condemnation For Those In Christ

Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus, …He condemned sin in the flesh by sending his own Son i the likeness of sinful flesh as a sin offering, – Romans 8:1-3b (CSB)

For those who are Christians – meaning that they have been saved through faith in Christ Jesus; believing that he lived a perfect, sinless life; he died on the cross in our place, reconciling us to God, and rose again on the third day – they are no longer condemned by their past, present, or future sins. Let’s bread this down into three parts: what Christ’s death did, what Christ did, and how Christians benefit.

To begin, Christ’s death, burial, and resurrection has bridged the gap that was created through sin. In Genesis 3, humankind becomes separated from God when man and woman chose to eat of the one tree that God said they were not to eat from. The result was that there was a schism created separating us from God. Where humans walked in the Garden of Eden with God, now they hid feeling shame that did not previously exist (Genesis 3: 8-10). God is holy, and sin cannot exist in his presence; the consequences of trying to stand before him is death, because we are sinful. The price for sin is death, so the only way that people were able to come to God was through a sacrificial system – we see how the system works throughout the Old Testament and specifically through Torah (the first five books of the Bible). As the Son of God, who was born to the virgin Mary and conceived by the Holy Spirit, Jesus lived a perfect, sinless life. He did nothing wrong and lived the life that Adam should have lived. When he was taken to the cross he paid the price that was meant to be for humanity. Someone undeserving of death died in the place of those who did deserve it. As a result, the schism now has a bridge.

Humanity is sinful. I do not know of anyone who can disagree that people do bad things. There may be arguments for the degree that humanity is sinful, and there may be arguments for the degree of sinfulness, but I would not believe I’m incorrect in saying that everyone believes that humanity is sinful. Because sin separates us from God, we are condemned to that punishment that we rightfully deserve – which is death (Romans 6:23a). That does not mean that different sins have different consequences, but all sin separates us from God (Romans 3:23). When Christ went to the cross and became the sacrifice for sin, he took the punishment that was meant to be paid by the individual person (I John 2:2). But we, if we are Christians, do not have to worry about being separated from God because we have been reconciled (Romans 6:23b).

No longer does humankind have to be separated from God, but we can be reunited with God in the relationship that we were originally created to be in. With Christ having taken the punishment for our sins, we are now reconciled with God. However, because we are still in a sinful world and are still dealing with the consequences of our sins and the sins of others, that means that we are still going to sin (Romans 8:3). What has changed, is that we are forgiven. When we have faith in Christ, we are forgiven. Forgiven, not only for our past sins, but for the sins that we are currently committing, and the sins that we are going to commit. But we have the assurance that once we are in the hand of Jesus, there is nothing that can take us out of his hand ( John 10:27-30). Christians can rejoice in the assurance that we have been forgiven.

There Is New Life in Righteousness

Now if Christ is in you, the body is dead because of sin, but the Spirit gives life because of righteousness. – Romans 8:10 (CSB)

Another big reason that Christians are able to rejoice is because of what that means for us spiritually. Because each of us is sinful, we are dead in that sin. That doesn’t mean that we are physically dead, or that we aren’t capable of doing things that would be considered good. What it does mean is that while we are stuck in our sins, we have no hope in there being anything else. All that we can do is live each day seeking only to live for ourselves, and that is an incredibly lonely way to live. Hedonism (living and seeking only one’s own pleasure) does nothing for the individual – no one who lives only for themselves is ever happy long term. But when we come to the saving knowledge of faith in Christ, we have a new life because of the Holy Spirit that is now in us. No longer does a person look only to themselves, but they begin to live in fellowship with God the way humankind was intended to. I Corinthians 15:45-58 compares and contrasts Adam the first man and Jesus. Adam was created to be in fellowship with God, failed, and all his children are condemned because of that. Jesus was a descended from Adam but conceived by the Holy Spirit, lived the life that Adam was supposed to live, and reconciled humankind back to God. Christians rejoice in this new life that allows for a right relationship with God, while having hope, and having a world that is so much larger than themselves.

There Is Nothing That Can Separate Us From the Love of Christ

Who can separate us from the love of Christ? Can affliction or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? As it is written: ‘Because of you were were being put to death all day long; we are counted as sheep to be slaughtered.’ No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Romans 8: 35-39 (CSB)

I have found throughout my Christian walk, that when scripture repeats itself or when you see a repeated theme, that means that it is important. Here, the with hyperbole that Paul uses of extreme situations, it is a repeat of John 10 that I mentioned previously. There is nothing that is able to separate us from the love of God. Nothing that is of this world and nothing that is from the world unseen will be able to separate the believer from the love of God. As a result God, through this letter Paul wrote to the Roman church, is able to give believers assurance of their salvation, and assurance that they will belong to him forever, and assurance that they can overcome. With that, however, there is another assurance: that trials will come. We have assurance that we will always be kept to the Lord, but we are also assured that there will be things that WILL try to separate us. And they won’t work – because nothing can separate us. That should bring comfort on multiple levels. I Peter 5:8 tells us that the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour, but he won’t be successful. There is comfort in knowing that no matter what we struggle with, whatever comes at us, no matter how often we fail, there is nothing, nothing, that is going to be able to break us away from the love of God once we belong to him.

Final Thoughts

What does it mean to rejoice? It means that no matter what comes our way we have the assurance that there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ. We have been forgiven for since committed, that we are committing, and what we will commit. We rejoice because we have this new life that isn’t about seeking out own pleasure through hedonism, but is about finding pleasure in being in God’s will and living for someone who is so far beyond ourselves. Finally, we rejoice that there is nothing that is going to be able to separate us from God’s love, regardless of the trials and temptations that are going to come our way (and they will come). Rejoicing isn’t only about Sunday morning; it isn’t only about the musical part of worship; it is all about what we now have in Christ.