Romans 8:12-17
Therefore, brothers, we have an obligation—but it is not to the sinful nature, to live according to it. For if you live according to the sinful nature, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live, because those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship. And by him we cry, “Abba, Father.” The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children. Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory.
Mark 14:32-36
They went to a place called Gethsemane, and Jesus said to his disciples, “Sit here while I pray.” He took Peter, James and John along with him, and he began to be deeply distressed and troubled. “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death,” he said to them. “Stay here and keep watch.”
Going a little farther, he fell to the ground and prayed that if possible the hour might pass from him. “Abba, Father,” he said, “everything is possible for you. Take this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will.”
A few years ago, the BBC had a news story of a man who had bought one of those home DNA testing kits you can send off and then get the result. I don’t know if any of you have done that — about where your ancestry comes from. My mother has done it, and our family — well, her family anyway, it turns out — is mainly from the Greater Manchester area, so not terribly exciting, I’m afraid. Although she did find that she was 0.5% Gujarati, which is fascinating. Where that comes from, who knows?
But anyway, when this chap had sent the results off, he got them back and looked at the family tree online, and was startled to see a bright red notification that said: New relative found: Father. The problem was, the name wasn’t the one that he grew up with. His mum had apparently forgotten to mention a few details of his childhood. He called her, half panicked, half laughing, and said, “Mum, is there anything you want to tell me?” And there was a long pause and apparently she said, “Well, I was wondering when you would find out.”
He later said that what shook him wasn’t the scandal — it was the overnight shift of identity. He’d always called somebody “Dad” who wasn’t his biological father; someone else was. And it made him realise how powerful that one word — Dad or Father — really is. The nature of being a biological father is that it’s an all-or-nothing affair. You’re either someone’s biological father or you’re not. It’s not something that changes from one day to the next, or that can ever stop being the case.
Paul’s message in Romans 8, which we’re looking at at the moment, is that the Christian faith is an all-or-nothing worldview. Just as in biological terms, so in spiritual terms, one either has God as one’s spiritual Father or one does not. And just as we have our biological father’s DNA inside us, having an effect on whatever it is — our hair colour, or nose length, or whatever — so Christians have their spiritual Father’s DNA, as it were, in the form of the Holy Spirit dwelling within us. And the Holy Spirit brings about not physical features, but spiritual features.
We’re going to be thinking about some of these using our passage from Romans 8 this morning. The first thing that the Father’s DNA — the Holy Spirit — causes to happen in Christians is described in verse 13 of our reading. It says: “If you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live.”
Now, we must understand first of all what Paul isn’t saying here. He’s not saying that the way to get to heaven, the way to get to eternal life, is to be a good person by putting to death the misdeeds of the body. That would defeat the point of the passage, and of the whole letter to the Romans, in which Paul lays out his great doctrine of salvation by faith and not by deeds. Rather, what Paul is saying here is that if you live by the Spirit — if you have him like DNA shaping your spiritual life — you will put to death the misdeeds of the body.
Notice those important words: “if by the Spirit you put to death.” What does that mean? Well, you may know that people who inherit one copy of the sickle-cell gene from their parents are resistant to malaria. You can only naturally kill the malaria parasite within your own body if you have the sickle-cell gene from a parent. And in the same way, you can only naturally kill sin if you have the Father’s spiritual DNA in you — in other words, the Holy Spirit.
This has two consequences, I think. First, a genuine, heartfelt desire to kill sin in one’s life is a bit like a DNA test. It’s good evidence that you have the Spirit dwelling in you if you consider your life a fight against sin. If you’re not daily waging war with sin, that’s a warning sign about the Spirit’s presence within you.
The second consequence is an encouragement to those who do struggle to put sin to death. You have no power to kill it by yourself, but the Spirit is the means of getting the victory. Perhaps a particular sin which just won’t go away is occurring to you right now in your own life. I think the next section helps us to discover how it is that we kill sin by the Spirit. So let’s move on to that now.
In verses 14 to 17, Paul goes on to link the Spirit’s presence to the truth and the experience that God is our Father. Now, God is a Father to everyone in that he created everyone, but not everyone knows him intimately in a fatherly way.
The book I Dared to Call Him Father is the true story of Bilquis Sheikh, a wealthy Pakistani Muslim woman whose life was transformed when she encountered Jesus through dreams and through reading the Bible. As she wrestled with fear and social pressure and loss, she came to believe that Jesus was God’s Son and that she could personally know him. The turning point came when she realised she could address God not as a distant master and ruler, but as a beloved Father — a word both forbidden and revolutionary in her background.
Verse 15 of our reading says: “The Spirit you received does not make you slaves, so that you live in fear again.” Islam is an excellent case in point here. The Qur’an expressly forbids referring to Allah as Father, stating that the most privileged way one can relate to him is like a slave to a master. The living in fear Paul talks about here comes from not knowing God as a loving, consistently forgiving Father, but rather as a volatile slave master. It is such fear — not knowing whether God will accept one or not — which leads to having to prove oneself to God through more and more extreme acts.
Bilquis Sheikh came to experience God as Paul did — as Abba. I don’t know if you noticed that that was a word in both our Epistle and our Gospel reading. Abba is an Aramaic word which is both intimate and respectful — it’s like “Dad” or “Daddy” in our language. When God is truly our spiritual Father, his DNA of the Spirit will necessarily give us the kind of relationship with God that Jesus had, where we think of him as Dad. The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children.
Now, we may have had a complicated relationship with our own father, but God can be to us a perfect Father — intimately tender and caring, infinitely powerful to protect and provide, and most importantly, infinitely consistent in his attitude towards us. And Paul ends by saying: “If we are children, then we are also heirs — heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ — if indeed we share his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory.”
Not that suffering like Jesus is a condition of heaven, because of course none of us can suffer as Jesus did, but rather having to suffer for one’s faith is a surefire sign that one is heading to heaven.
So let’s return to our question from before: how do we put to death sin in our lives by the Spirit? Well, it’s by allowing the Spirit to convince us of the tender, forgiving, compassionate love of Abba — of our Father. He demonstrated this love in the most precious thing that he possessed: his only Son. It’s hard to arm-wrestle with sin; much better to melt it with the self-giving love of the Father, displayed and experienced in the Son.
Next time you mess up, or your conscience convicts you, cry out, “Abba, Father, show me in Jesus how much you love me. Show me the love that takes away that very sin by removing it from my shoulders and placing it on the shoulders of Jesus.”
And as ever, I’d like to end by repeating Paul’s burden in Romans chapter 8 — that Christianity is an all-or-nothing religion. Either you have God’s spiritual DNA in you, or you don’t. To have the Spirit in you is joy, it’s peace, glory, wonder, and victory. Above all, it is to have the Father’s attitude towards Jesus — that is, to find him the most precious thing in the world, and to ache longingly for the day when we will come into our full inheritance with him forever.
We’ve been thinking about DNA tests. If what I just said doesn’t resonate with you at all, then let that be a warning. Elsewhere, St Paul said: “Now is the day of salvation. Now is the time to confess one’s sins and turn to Christ.” Now is the time to think: Do I have a relationship where I can call God ‘Dad’?
The Spirit works in all our hearts to convict us of our sin, to turn us to Christ. This morning, let’s ask him to do both those things, and to know the peace and joy of knowing our heavenly Father.