What do you live for? It is one of those big questions that we hear asked and never really want to think about because we just want to get on with it. Life is what it is, and so we just want to live it no matter where we are. You don’t ever really ask fish about the water they swim in, or animals about the fields they roam in. It is what it is for them, so it often feels that way for us. “What do I live for?” – “surviving,” most of us might respond. Indeed, how can we think about anything else with the state the world is in, the pressure that is on each of us in terms of life, work, family, friends, career, and the day-to-day norms of our world? How could we answer anything but?

Perhaps the question might run deeper in our thinking as we look at the world. We begin to wonder how we might even survive in this age, never mind figure out what we are meant to be living for, as we worry about the state of the world and the many challenges and threats each of us faces. So life becomes simple about getting through each day without much thought for the future. Is that not so true today, that when we think about the state of the world and the set of our city, we end up with more to fear and worry about than things to be excited for and contend for? Sometimes in the struggles to live, we lose sight of the gift that life is, and then comes a moment that might wake us. I love how CS Lewis puts it when writing about the challenge to live in a difficult age:

“And this reminder is, so far as it goes, a good thing. We have been waked from a pretty dream, and now we can begin to talk about realities. … It is our business to live by our own law, not by fears: to follow, in private or in public life, the law of love and temperance even when they seem to be suicidal, and not the law of competition and grab, even when they seem to be necessary to our own survival. For it is part of our spiritual law never to put survival first.”

For me, it is a funny thing to think of the challenges previous generations faced and lived through, and how each must have thought it could not get much worse. Indeed when you think our city and all the Chaos that unfolded as Belfast started to grow, how people must have wondered where God was through the losses of WWI, then as they sheltered through the worst of the Blitz and in the years after tried to rebuild their lives; Then through the senseless violence of the troubles and the rebuilding that has followed, for so many and so long life has simply been survival. Yet, as Lewis writes about living in the age of the atomic bomb, he is not calling people to recklessness: He is calling them to remember that there is more than merely continuing to exist. A life that survives by surrounding love, courage, mercy and faith is no life at all, and not the life we were made for. Today, Paul says something even more beautiful, even deeper for those who live in faith; the life-giving Spirit Christ gives to us does not drive us back into fear! Rather, by our sonship, our adoption into the family of God, we have recieved a gift of deeper life, abundant life; life that transcends our moment because no matter what is going on by faith we are always Children of god. Thus, we are not an abandoned people desperately trying to keep ourselves alive; we are Children of God freed to live the abundant life, and indeed called to live it.

1 We are not debtors to the old way of life (Romans 8:12–13)

There is no greater passage about our life in all of Scripture than Romans 8, as Paul has been teaching about the life of faith and the life of the Spirit for the believer in the church. Romans 8 is one of those passages that need to be read and reread to remind us of who we are because of Christ and in Christ. In the first few chapters, Paul has been teaching this young church about the difficulty of Sin and how the Gospel shines a light onto its darkness in our lives. Furthermore, how the Gospel reveals the righteousness of God before our sinfulness and failing, it’s power and beautiful stuff, heavy and weighty, and if that was the content of the letter, it would be pretty depressing stuff – you are sinners, and God is righteous REPENT. Yet, that is not where Paul’s thinking and teaching finishes as the Spirit moves him onto teaching about not just what the Gospel does, but also what it does in all who respond – new life. In chapters five to eight, Paul has been teaching the church about this new Gospel, humanity, and life before going on to teach about how the Gospel fulfils all of God’s promises and unifies the church. Thus, it is right in the middle of this letter, and the end of Paul’s section about life in the church, that we find ourselves thinking about an aspect of this new life for us.

Isn’t it interesting then where the flow of thought goes in Chapter 8, after reminding all who read of the reality of the Gospel in our lives by Christ, no condemnation and then the call to live out the life of the Spirit, the mind of Spirit, and all that is life and peace (7). All of this wonderful imagery about life in the Spirit and for the Kingdom summed up in that anchor point of the whole passage: “The Spirit of God, who raised Jesus from the dead, lives in you. And just as God raised Christ Jesus from the dead, he will give life to your mortal bodies by this same Spirit living within you.” (8:12)

Think about that for a moment when you think about your life right now that whatever you are going through, whatever weight you are carrying, whatever grief you are navigating, whatever worry you and wondering through, whatever fear stands before you – that in all those things and through them if you have faith in Christ then the same spirit who raised him from the dead is now at work in you and through you in this moment. The Spirit of God that emptied the tomb is the same Spirit who is at work in your life, and in our church, and through our situations now today; so death cannot stop him. Why do we always limit ourselves to surviving? Hence, how Paul begins his new thought in verse 12 about this new humanity – we have an obligation! Quite literally a debt, to owe something. Because of the death-defying power that is at work with us, we have a debt/obligation – that means we delight in being able to do something! And our debt is not to the old way, as Philips puts it: “you can see that we have no particular reason to feel grateful to our sensual nature, or to live life on the level of the instincts.”. The life-giving Spirit does not give us life that we continue in the death of the old ways. In Christ and his life, our Obligation and debt is not to be paid off but to live out! We have been given life, and our obligation is to live that Kingdom life fully. Thus, the question before us is first: Do we know the fullness of this life by faith? Then, as followers of Jesus, it is no longer simply what pressures we face in our lives but what has the right to rule our hearts and shape our lives as we live because of the life of the Spirit.

You see, the flesh is not simply our body. Paul is not saying do not be ruled by your bodily urges; it’s far deeper than that, it is about the heart. Life is meant to be lived outward, but life lived under obligation to the flesh is dead life curved in upon itself, and the longer it is lived, the deeper it goes. The darker it gets as fear becomes normal and self-preservation becomes the standard by which we swim our waters each day. CS lewis calls it “the prison of self.” To help us understand what it means to live one way or another Lewis then goes on to talk about our imagination: if we are imrisioned in ourselves then our imagination is something that keeps us form others and to ourselves; if we are free and live under our obligation to the life giving Spirit then our imagination becomes somethign that gives life as it drive Sus towards others and God in love, kindness, mercy, and Grace – it becomes a place of life because of the life of the Spirit.

How often we fall back into the old habits of fear and life curved inward, how often we open the door to our self-prison and keep ourselves there when there is so much more to know and enjoy. We owe fear nothing, says Paul, and that means in the Spirit, standing tall and refusing to allow this world to shrink our life or our witness, regardless of what is going on before us, or the church we worship in. Our obligation to life means that as disciples we must never allow fear to push us back into the prison of self from what God might be calling us to do; and as a church it means refusing to make insitutional survival our highest goal or purpose; our witness is not to simply keep the light bulbs on for as long as we can; even as we face decline and change, and we pray in the face of challenges, it is not bad to worry about what might be, but it becomes fear when the we live as if the challenges before us are greater than the Spirit who emptied the tomb in us. Will we let fear govern our faith or the Spirit who raised Christ from the dead?

2 We are children of God, not slaves returning to fear (Romans 8:14–17)

So where does that life come from, and how can we be sure about it in the face of all that goes on and the fear that builds? Simple – remember what Paul says here, it comes from who we are because of Christ: “Those who the Spirit of God leads are the children of God.” The answer to fear is not found in the prison of ourselves, it is not found in moralism, or religion, or do-better-ism; nor is it found in becoming stronger in ourselves, more confident, more positive, or more certain about what tomorrow will bring. The answer to fear is not found in this world, but in the lifting of our heads to the Father we know by the Spirit, the Father we belong to! Paul says that we have not received a spirit of slavery that pushes us back into fear, but the Spirit of adoption by whom we cry, “Abba, Father.” Thus, Paul is highlighting here how this is deeper than knowing a truth; it is relational to the depth of parenthood. By the Cross, Christ becomes our brother and God our father. Think about the reality of life as a slave: always wondering if they have done enough, always fearful that one mistake or one loss will leave them with nothing; with no foundation or identity of their own – but the child lives from a place already given, on the foundation of love that is unconditional; and they know where they belong – it is not that we never feel fear, or that life suddenly becomes easy because we found what we where looking for. Yet, we no longer live in the prison of ourselves and under the weight of our inward life; in Christ, we are not people trying to earn our place before God, nor are we abandoned and lost, fumbling through the world to try to make a future we can tolerate. We are children who can cry out to our Father by His Spirit as we walk through dark valleys, process grief, or face unknowable fears, moving forward by faith rather than back into the prison of ourselves, because we know the joy of the empty tomb.

Our life, because of Christ, then is radically different from anything the world can offer, because its source is not from this world. It changes how we live individually, and more beautifully, it changes how we live communally – together as a church. You see, fear is not just individual; it can become communal as we begin to think like an orphan, to believe that everything depends on our strength and schemes: upon the money that remains, the leaders who are left, the strength we can still find, or the future we can somehow secure for ourselves. We retreat into the institutional prisons of better days even as Paul reminds us that our first and deepest identity is not found in our numbers, or our resources, or even in whether everything works out as we hope – no, our identity is that we are children of God. And nothing will ever take that form from us; we can face decline honestly without believing God has abandoned us, we can feel the loss of key people without acting as though ministry is impossible or the world will not go on, and we can face challenge without allowing fear to become our master. We are free to pray, to welcome, to serve, to give, to take faithful risks, and to love this city because our future is held by the Father whom we delight in calling Abba – the question is, are we committed to doing those things? Even when the reality of living out faith in a broken world and a sinful city hits us. Let’s be clear, Paul is not sentimental about any of this, because he says that if we are children, then we are heirs, heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ. Then he points to the duality of what that means – abundant life and an assurance of suffering and hardship. Yet it is by suffering we are sanctified and shaped to share in His Future Glory, the consummation of our abundant life. Thus, adoption does not mean an easy life; it means that even through suffering, we know who we are, whose we are, and what will come in the end.

3 We groan, but we do not despair (Romans 8:18-23)

Yet knowing that we are Children of God does not mean that we are somehow removed from the realities of this world and its brokenness, even though parts of the church try to tell us that following Jesus means prosperity – in a broken world, there will come a day when we feel the weight of it. Faith helps us make sense of the suffering, but it does not protect us from the groaning of this world as it creeps under the weight of sin. The life of faith changes how we understand it and how we walk through it because we know the power of the Cross. Paul is honest about this when he writes: “the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time,” and not only creation, but we ourselves “groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies.” The life the Spirit gives is the consummation of all our searching, even if we will not admit it ourselves because we would rather stay comfy in the prisons of self. There is no pretending here, no shallow optimism that tells us everything is fine when it is not – this world is broken and subjected to frustration, held in bondage to decay, and we see that groaning all around us. We see it so clearly in the normal lives around us marked by grief, in communities divided by old wounds, in institutions weakening, in bodies failing, and in the sense that so much of the world is not as it should be.

Yet, Paul does not describe this groaning as the final sounds of death; they are not the last breath’s of one clinging to life – Paul uses the imagery of new life, these groans are not the end of something but the beginning, it is akin to the pains of childbirth; real pain, costly pain, but pain that is moving somewhere because God is not finished with his world. Thus, we do ignore the pain of losses that we have gone through or the worry that is coming with the challenges that remain before us, but neither do we give into the whisper of fear that tells us they are proof that God has abandoned us, or is punishing us, or somehow distancing us. Lewis is helpful again as we wrote “If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.” That longing is not an excuse to escape this world. Still, a reminder that we were made for the world that will come by the renewal of all things in Christ, when ever tear will be whipped away, and every pain ended, a world where we will no longer be able to find comfort in the prison of ourselves. Now, the church must stand within the groaning rather than above it, sharing the pain of the world around us while bearing witness that decay, division, suffering and death will not have the final word. Why? Because that is the witness of the Cross and the way as we live our adoption and delight in our obligation, knowing that the glory that will be revealed is greater than the suffering of this present age.

4 We live by hope, not by sight (Romans 8:24-25)

Thus, Paul brings us to hope and all its beauty: not the shallow hope of this world that crosses its fingers and tells itself everything will probably work out, but the deep hope of faith that rests on what God has done in Christ, and more beautifully still – what he has promised still to do:

“For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all.”

Hope lives in the tension between what is and what is yet to be; Hope held is what keeps the door of our self prisons form slamming shut; the place where prayers seem unanswered, where the weight of change is heavy and slow as we feel like we are dragging ourselves forward to a future that is shrouded by fog. That is the true beauty of hope and faith: learning to live by promise rather than proof the world might demand. Each of us, then, must keep praying, engaging with the word, and trusting God when nothing seems to move. In our communities, it means remembering what true faithfulness is measured by: not by numbers, money, success, or what can be seen in the moment, but by our identity and call in Christ. We still plan, give, welcome, serve and proclaim Christ, but we can do it without panic because the outcome belongs to God. We constantly delight in and remember what Paul said: “if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently,” because when we wait, God is at work. Thus, Christian patience is not passivity; it is steadfastness – the quiet courage to keep moving forward by faith because the Spirit is at work and the glory of God is still to come, even in the most difficult circumstances.

What We Live By (Conclusion)

Perhaps then the question is not “What do you live for?” Rather, it needs to be” “What do you live by?” And Paul answers that we do not live by fear, by sight, or by the instinct to survive: we live by the Spirit who has made us Children of God by the Cross of Christ. The same Spirit who meets us in the groaning of this world, and who leads us forward in the sure hope that the glory still to come will be greater than anything we face now as we navigate all that is before us. Today, let’s not merely cling to life, but by faith receive it, live it, and give it away for the glory of God and so that others might find their way home to him. This is our call, and this is what true faithfulness looks like in a world that thinks life is simply survival.