Live in harmony with God your Father.

 

Sermon for Trinity Sunday, May 26, 2024

Grace, mercy, and peace be yours, forever, from God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  Amen.

Romans 8:12-17  ¹²So then, brothers, we do not owe it to the sinful flesh to live in harmony with it.  ¹³For if you live in harmony with the sinful flesh, you are going to die.  But if by the Spirit you put to death the actions of the body, you will live.  ¹⁴Indeed, those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God.  ¹⁵For you did not receive a spirit of slavery so that you are afraid again, but you received the Spirit of adoption by whom we call out, “Abba, Father!”  ¹⁶The Spirit himself joins our spirit in testifying that we are God’s children.  ¹⁷Now if we are children, we are also heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, since we suffer with him, so that we may also be glorified with him. (EHV)

Live in harmony with God your Father.

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ,

            The nature of this text almost forces a person to compare life in our earthly families with the life given to us in God’s heavenly family.  Consequently, our experience with our earthly father may well color how we perceive our relationship with our heavenly Father, who is not only our Father, but the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who made it possible for you to Live in harmony with God your Father.

What I mean when I say that your relationship with your earthly father may well color how you see your heavenly Father, what I mean is that if you have a great, kind, loving, and generous dad here on earth, you likely expect that is exactly what you will see in your heavenly Father. 

On the other hand, if you haven’t had a good relationship with your dad, perhaps fought with him, or if he was extremely judgmental and hard to live with, if he had many faults, or especially, if you suffered abuse or indignity at his hands, you might not feel any comfort at all from the idea that God is your true Father.  Many people with such an experience might not want to have anything to do with any father.  Or they may be terrified of what their Almighty Father might do to them.

Therefore, let’s begin by examining what sin has done to the father’s role in this world.  Because we are all under the curse of sin in this world, every father falls short of the goodness God would expect us to live.  No father could live up to the perfection we each might want and certainly, God would demand of us.  Worse yet, fathers are as susceptible to sin as anyone else, so sometimes, that means a father makes a very bad example in this life. 

Dear friends, if you were someone caught in such a painful situation, understand that this is not the father God means.  This is what happens when sin controls the man.  However, the writer tells us to Live in harmony with God your Father.

So, let’s open our eyes to what the Holy Spirit really wants us to see.  St. Paul was given to write, “So then, brothers, we do not owe it to the sinful flesh to live in harmony with it.”  In other words, whether you had a great dad, or a man of human wreckage as your earthly father, God wants us not to be controlled by the sinful nature we inherited from our parents.  Every person on earth was controlled by sin.  Our natural flesh was infected and infested with the unwillingness to live a holy life.  Yet, because Jesus lived and died for the whole world, He has paid the debt we owed to God for the sin of every person. 

Furthermore, because the Holy Spirit worked faith in the hearts of those who believe and trust in Jesus and what He has done for us, we who believe in Jesus are no longer controlled by Satan, sin, or death.  Because we have been purchased by the blood of the Lamb of God, we, who once were slaves to sin and subject to the devil’s accusations, have been set free to live under the authority of the Holy One who purchased our freedom.  We are no longer subject to the authority of the flesh which wanted only to sin.  Plus, we no longer need to be terrified of God’s judgment—a fear that might have kept us hiding from God’s loving kindness, as demonstrated by Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.

Paul wrote, “For if you live in harmony with the sinful flesh, you are going to die.  But if by the Spirit you put to death the actions of the body, you will live.  What our natural man leads us to do leads to eternal punishment and death in the eternal condemnation intended for the devil and his angels.  Our God does not desire that for any person.  Therefore, He sent His Son to end death for those who believe.  Thus, through faith in Jesus, we are connected to the life, death, and the resurrection of Jesus, our Savior, as St. Paul observed earlier in this letter, “Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?  We were therefore buried with him by this baptism into his death, so that just as he was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too would also walk in a new life.” (Romans 6:3-4)  It is through the Spirit-given faith in Jesus that we put to death the actions of the body. 

Through this faith, we live!  Along with that, through this faith, God makes us His own dear children.  Paul explained, “Indeed, those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God.  For you did not receive a spirit of slavery so that you are afraid again, but you received the Spirit of adoption by whom we call out, “Abba, Father!”  When the Holy Spirit works faith in us through Baptism or the hearing of the Gospel of all that Jesus has done to set us free from the devil’s control, He is working in us the reality that God has adopted us into His family.  Now consider the most benevolent, generous, kind, and just Father that has ever been, or ever can be—the One who created this world and everything in it and sent His only begotten Son to rescue us from the darkness of death—has counted us—who once were enemies and lost—as His own dear children to whom He gladly gives all things, who disciplines us in His divine care, and from whom He willingly hears our prayers, and answers them!

St. John marveled at this news rejoicing, “See the kind of love the Father has given us that we should be called children of God, and that is what we are!” (1 John 3:1)  Now, a father who truly loves his children will do everything in his power to provide what they need in life, and he will provide the discipline and training that will guide them into being the best citizens they can be for the good of their family and neighbors.  This is precisely what we have in our heavenly Father.  He gives us everything we need for life here on earth, but especially so that we may enjoy everlasting life in our heavenly home with Him.

Children who have a father like this, should gladly want to be like their father and to do all they can to please him.  Thus, trusting in our heavenly Father, St. John wrote, “Dear friends, we are children of God now, but what we will be has not yet been revealed.  We know that when he is revealed we will be like him, and we will see him as he really is.  Everyone who has this hope purifies himself, just as Jesus is pure.” (1 John 3:2-3)  This is basically the same thing Paul expresses here in that you should Live in harmony with God your Father. 

We live in harmony with God if we do His will.  When the disciples asked Jesus, “What should we do to carry out the works of God?”  Jesus answered them, “This is the work of God: that you believe in the one he sent.” (John 6:28-29)  How do we Live in harmony with God your Father?  We put our complete trust and confidence in Jesus who, on our behalf, lived in perfect harmony with His Father’s will.  Then, knowing that as long as we remain in this world, we still sin, we turn again and again to Jesus in repentance knowing that our sins are forgiven because of what He has done for us. 

What does that do for us in the end?  “The Spirit himself joins our spirit in testifying that we are God’s children.  Now if we are children, we are also heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, since we suffer with him, so that we may also be glorified with him.”  Through faith in Jesus, worked in us by the power of the Holy Spirit in Word and Sacrament, we inherit both forgiveness of all sin and eternal life in the mansions of heaven.  Since we are also heirs of the Son, we inherit the treasury of His Good works, counted to us by faith, so that we never stand before God dressed in the putrid, filthy, tattered clothes of our own sin, but rather, we are dressed in the glorious righteousness of Christ Jesus, God’s Son.

On Trinity Sunday, we recognize that only the Triune God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit gives us what we need, both, to live here on earth, and so that we might enjoy eternal life in the glories of heaven.  No other god, no other person, no other idea can do anything for our everlasting welfare.  Only the God of the Bible can help us.  Only the God of the Bible has already done everything needed to set us free from the devil and his chains.  Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, for by this Three in One, we Live in harmony with God our Father.  Amen.

The Lord of peace himself give you peace at all times and in every way.  The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all.  Amen.