Ij
"The Truth Will Set You Free" Romans 7:13-8:4
By Clancy Nixon
March 18, 2006
Church of the Holy Spirit
Ashburn, Virginia
A First Grade Sunday School teacher had just concluded her lesson and wanted to
make sure she had made her point. She said, "Can any student tell me, what must you do
before you can obtain forgiveness of sin?" There was a short bit of silence and then, from
the back of the room, a boy ventured an opinion. "You have to sin?" Yes, it seems we
can't avoid sinning, just like we must be tempted, and we must confess and repent.
In Lent, the Church reminds us to focus on the sin in our own lives, "by self-
examination and repentance; prayer, fasting, and self-denial; and by reading and
meditating on God's holy Word." (BCP, p. 265) Somehow, that great traditional advice
gets conflated and shortened to this popular nostrum: "Take something on, and give
something up," and that typically is further conflated to food. If we are going to shorten
our Lenten charge, I think we'd be better off focusing on self-examination and
repentance. The purpose of self-examination during Lent is self-knowledge of your own
weaknesses, your sin patterns, your growing edges. There is a time for looking at your
strengths, too, but in Lent, we're to humble ourselves, and look for the things that lead to
repentance. Only when we have uncovered and owned our areas of sin can we begin to
repent of them. Self-examination does not mean you may not ask for help in uncovering
the sin or lies you have believed. If you are ignorant about a particular sin, then you don't
know enough to repent of that sin. You may know what the Bible says about a situation,
for example that it is a sin to exasperate your child, but you may not know that that is
what you are doing with your child this week. That is why asking someone close to you
to tell you your sin, to point out your blind spots, is a very useful exercise in self-
examination. I have given permission and encouragement for my accountability partner,
my wife, and my prayer minister to point out my sins, so I can ask Jesus to set me free
from them. Let's say this together: "You shall know the truth, and the Truth will set you
free." (John 8:32)
Most of us usually know what our sins are; we just don't know enough, we have
not experienced God in such a way, that we are able to overcome our sins. Now the
Greek word for repent, metanoia, simply means to change your mind. It implies new
behavior, but repentance does not say that. When you truly change your mind, you will
change your direction. The Bible teaches that right action begins with right thinking.
One of the things that I am learning this week is that behind every sin I commit is a lie
that I have believed. Let's say Romans 7:11 together: "For sin, seizing the opportunity
afforded by the commandment, deceived me, and through the commandment put me to
death." Sin brings deception, and deception brings sin. We sin because we don't have
God's perspective on things we have believed a lie of some kind. The first sin was a
result of deception. Eve ate the apple in the Garden because the snake deceived her into
believing that God didn't really say it would lead to death to eat it, that it was good for
eating, and would give her the knowledge of good and evil. When they tired to excuse
their behavior to God, Eve said she was deceived, but Adam blamed his wife! They both
1
believed lies. The devil will always try to cast doubt on God's Word did God really say
that? Will you really die? Eve believed the lies of the snake. Adam believed the lie that
he could be a passive husband, letting his wife sin, and then joining her since she did it
first. If they knew the truth and lived it, they would not have fallen. For another example,
teenagers, some of you might believe the lie that you know better than God or your
parents what is good for you. That's what I thought when I was eighteen! That lie led
me to do some things in my college days that were not good, and came back to bite me.
You might believe a lie that if you cheat on a test just this one time, no one will ever
know. Or the lie that if something feels right, it's okay to do it. How about the lie that
God does not care about you, because you are worthless? Those kind of lies will lead
you to sin and misery. Let's say this together: "You will know the truth, and the truth
will set you free."
Teenagers, one truth about God and you is that God and your parents do know
what is better for you when you are a teenager. I have read brain science recently that
says that your limbic system, the emotional, more primitive part of your brain, overrides
the cerebral cortex, the logical analytical part, almost all of the time. Madison Avenue
knows this; that's why when they sell Nike shoes, they don't try to convince you to buy
them with rational arguments, but instead they aim directly for the emotions with images
and icons. I learned from a branding specialist that it is almost impossible for a young
adult to even have a single purely rational thought until he or she is 25 years old. Until
that age, our decisions are controlled almost entirely by our limbic system. Let's go to
the next lie. Another truth is that if you cheat just once on a test, you are highly likely to
cheat again, until you do get caught. If you are like my sons, you're in even bigger
trouble on this one, because Ginger and I and many other parents have been praying
regularly since you were born that if you ever do sin, you will always be caught. No
apologies there! If you think you will escape consequences, or if you think you can make
a good excuse, you are deceived by lies. All excuses sound futile to God, and you cannot
keep secrets from God!
The truth is, many things feel right because our feelings and brain pathways have
been conditioned by mass media to respond that way, but they are not right in God's eyes
at all, so we can't trust our feelings to guide us into spiritual or moral truth. Take the
infatuation process having a crush on someone. National Geographic reported recently
that scientists now know that the chemicals that your brain produces when you are falling
in love are the same ones that a brain produces when it is caught in obsessive-compulsive
disorder. We desperately need to uncover the lies that our own minds are telling us, so
that we can live holy lives. So this Lent, uncover the lies behind your sin. We sin
because we have believed a lie of some kind. Let's say it again, using "me" this time,
instead of you: "The Truth will set me free."
I received Theophostic Prayer ministry recently. This is a method of prayer that
uncovers lies imbedded in our memories that are interfering with our lives today
thorough presenting negative emotions like anger. Now you can be angry based on truth,
and not a lie there is such a thing as righteous anger. But Paul says in your anger, do
not sin, and don't let the sun go down on your anger. When anger festers, it becomes sin.
I discovered that when you repeatedly feel the negative emotions like anger or shame,
these feelings match lies that you have long believed. When the lie is dispelled and the
light of truth comes in, then the emotions change to match the truth. For example, I have
2
long had a hard time remembering anything that happened to me before I was ten years
old. That is when my father left my mother and sisters and set up another home with a
younger woman. I recently discovered why I had blocked out those memories before my
dad left. It is not because they were sad or bad, but because they were happy. I was so sad
as a ten year old that my dad had left, that my earlier happy memories were too hard for
me to deal with by comparison with my now sad reality. Without realizing it, for 39
years, I had believed a lie that I needed to forget my happy childhood so that I would not
become sad through considering what I had lost. For the first time, I'm now accessing
memories of my family when my parents were in love, and we were all happy together.
I've decided to get the old 16 millimeter home movies I've never seen from that period
made into a DVD. The truth is, those happy memories are helping me to reinterpret my
early childhood it was happier and better than I used to think it was. My memory was
not a lie; my interpretation was a lie. Children are great recorders, but lousy interpreters,
because children devise many defense mechanisms to keep themselves safe that cause
trouble later. My new interpretation of my past is helping me to overcome sin in my life
in the present. I can see that I have been too critical of myself and my family, based on
the lie that things are worse than they really are. In prayer, Jesus dispelled that lie.
Thanks be to God for truth! Truth is essential for healing and wholeness. That's
one reason why as a church we will not give up on the whole notion of absolute truth. If
you lose truth as a category that is knowable or even real, then you are left with a
corroded gospel with little power to heal or save. Jesus is the truth. "When the Son sets
you free, you will be free, indeed." Amen?
The Apostle Paul tells us some difficult truths about law and sin in the book of
Romans. In order to understand our sin, we must first understand how the New
Testament believer is to regard the law. Paul said that law reveals sin (3:20), it condemns
the sinner (3:19), and the law brings God's wrath (4:15). In Romans 6:20, Paul famously
said, "We are not under law, but under grace." How do we reconcile this with the Jewish
sentiment we find in Psalm 19, where the law is described as "more precious than gold,
and sweeter than honey?" Is Paul preaching Antinomianism those who say that all law
has been abolished except the commandment of love? Antinomians hate the law and
repudiate it. These are the purveyors of relativism, those who say I have my truth, and
you have yours, but don't lay your trip on me. Paul says, no, I'm not preaching that,
heaven forbid! In Romans 6:20, Paul is referring to the doctrine of Justification, the
teaching that our salvation comes not through obedience to the law or any works, but
through God's sheer grace and mercy alone. In Galatians 5:18, Paul says that "if you are
led by the Spirit, you are not under law." Here the antithesis between law and grace
refers to the doctrine of Sanctification, the teaching that we are not made holy by
struggling to keep the law, but by the power of the Spirit working in us. In these two
senses, we are freed or released from the law. But this does not mean that we have no
more obligation to the law. Romans 8:4 shows us that God's law is the revelation of
God's will which God expects that we shall fulfill by living lives of righteousness. The
Reformers called this the "Third Use of the Law."
Paul defends the law from the charge that it is sinful. In Romans 7, Paul says the
law does three things with regard to sin: it reveals sin, it provokes sin, and it condemns
sin. The law reveals or defines sin, says verse 7. It's like a basketball game that gets a
new rule. When I was young, there were no three point shots in basketball, no line to
3
measure it, and no extra penalty for fouling for it. That dates me, I know. Now that there
is a new law about 3 point shots, there is also the possibility of shooting three foul shots
if you are fouled when shooting outside the line. The law defines the sin. The law reveals
God's will for us, so the law is truth.
The law also provokes sin, as in verse 8. Ever since Adam and Eve, humans have
been enticed by forbidden fruit. Some people have a propensity to react negatively to any
direction. So if they see a sign that says, "Reduce Speed Ahead," they think, "Why
should I?" The law also condemns sin, verse 10. Sin is so bad that sin even makes the
law look bad. Consider a criminal. He is caught, arrested, tried, found guilty, and
sentenced to prison. True, the law convicted and sentenced him. But he has no one to
blame but himself, and his behavior.
On the attitude to the law, at the opposite end of the spectrum from the libertine is
the legalist. Legalists fear the law, and are in bondage to it. They think that their
relationship to God depends on their obedience to it, and they seek to be both justified
and sanctified by it. Legalists show signs of new birth, but their religion is about law, not
gospel; about slavery to rules, not about freedom in Christ. They are like Lazarus when
he first emerged from the grave, alive but still bound head to toe.
As Pogo said, "We have met the enemy, and he is us." Or rather, as the Apostle
Paul said in Romans 7:23, our enemy is our own sinful nature, waging war within our
minds. We are so easily deceived. We are to be neither legalists nor libertines. We are to
be free Christians who joyfully fulfill the moral law out of love for Christ, even as the
Jews did in Psalm 19. But that is so hard to do, as Paul says in 7:15, because the good he
wants to do, he does not do, but what he hates, he does. How can we do that?
Chapter 8 tells us how we can accomplish that only by the Holy Spirit. What the
law could not do, God did he made provision for our justification and our
sanctification. First he sent his only Son to justify us by his blood, and then he sent his
Spirit, which empowers us to fulfill the requirements of the law. The members of the
Trinity work together with the third use of the law, and that is to bring us into holy living.
I love old Far Side cartoons. As you can see in this cartoon, there are a group of
scientists gathered around another scientist. The one in the middle is normal looking, but
the others are grotesque. Huge eyes, monstrous lips, elongated faces. They are trying to
get the normal looking scientist to take a drink out of a steaming vial. The caption:
"Laboratory peer pressure." If you and I could see how ugly our sin is, and how much it
distorts us through lies, we would stay far away from it, no matter the pressure from
others, or from our own sinful nature. Let's say this together: "The Truth will set me
free." Jesus is the truth.
4