From Slaves to Sons
No Longer Bound • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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The Papers Have Been Signed
The Papers Have Been Signed
Last week we sat in a courtroom and heard a verdict read:
THERE IS THEREFORE, no condemnation FOR THOSE WHO ARE IN CHRIST JESUS.
Today I want to walk you out of that courtroom...
and into a family room,
because Paul doesn't stop at....
"YOU HAVE BEEN acquitted OF ALL CHARGES."
He keeps going until you're not just free — you ARE GIVEN A NAME.
12 Therefore, brethren, we are debtors—not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh. 13 For if you live according to the flesh you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. 14 For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God. 15 For you did not receive the spirit of bondage again to fear, but you received the Spirit of adoption by whom we cry out, “Abba, Father.” 16 The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, 17 and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him, that we may also be glorified together.
HOW MANY OF YOU HAVE EVER BEEN APART OF AN ADOPTION HEARING?
IN YOUR MINDS EYE....Picture an adoption hearing.
A judge signs the final decree,
and in that instant, in the eyes of the law, everything changes.
The child isn't a guest anymore.
IT IS NOT a foster placement anymore.
IT’S NOT, waiting to see if this is permanent.
NO TODAY.......The name on the paperwork changes.
The inheritance rights HAVE BEEN ACTIVATED.
Nothing about that child's past disqualifies THEM FOR....
what just became legally, permanently true.
THIS IS the picture Paul is trying to show us in Romans 8:12-17.
the word he uses for "adoption" wasn't a soft, sentimental word in his day.
It was a courtroom word.
It's still one of the richest phrases in this whole chapter,
IN FACT...WE have sung about it for years without....
ever unpacking what it actually meant to….
the people who first read it.
This is week two of "No Longer Bound."
Last week the bondage we walked out of was the penalty of sin —
the katakrima that no longer holds any legal claim on you.
This week, the bondage Paul dismantles is different:
the bondage of a fear-based identity,
the kind that never quite believes it's safe, wanted, or permanent in God's house.
OH COME ON....SOME OF YOU KNOW WHAT I’M TALKING ABOUT
YOU’VE BEEN STRUGGLING WITH THE IDEA THAT....
GOD COULD WANT OR LOVE SOMEONE LIKE YOU
IF last week settled your record, IF IT WAS WIPED CLEAN
THEN, this week IT’S about settling your name.
Paul opens this section with a notice of debt:
12 Therefore, brothers and sisters, we have an obligation—but it is not to the flesh, to live according to it.
Before he tells you who you've become,
he wants to remind you who you no longer owe.
POINT ONE: The Debt You No Longer Owe (v.12-13)
POINT ONE: The Debt You No Longer Owe (v.12-13)
The word "debtors" in verse 12 is the Greek opheiletai — (OF-FEE-LETAY)
someone under legal obligation,
someone who owes a debt they're bound to pay.
Paul says...
you're not in debt to the flesh anymore.
You don't owe your old nature anything.
It has no legal claim on you.
But look at verse 13, because Paul isn't finished:
13 For if you live according to the flesh you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.
The flesh still makes daily demands.....
even after the debt is cancelled.
OH COME ON....YOU KNOW WHAT I’M TALKING ABOUT
BUT THE WORD SAYS.....
You don't have to pay those demands anymore — BUT.… WATCH THIS...
you do have to actively refuse them.
Here's THE PLACE most of us live in without naming it:
your legal status changed the moment you were justified,
but your daily choices.......COME ONE
YOUR CHOICES.....still have to agree with that status.
BUT PASTOR YOU SAID THERE IS NO CONDEMNATION...YOUR RIGHT.....THERE ISN’T
Paul is not contradicting last week's message of no condemnation —
he's building the next floor on top of it.
You ARE NOT paying a debt when you put sin to death.
YOU ARE acting like the free person you already are.
BECAUSE SIN NO LONGER HAS A HOLD OF YOUR LIFE
YOU HAVE BEEN SET FREE......SO LIVE LIKE IT
Think of it like a former employee....
HE still shows up to the old job out of habit,
even after HE HAS already been hired somewhere new
NOT ONLY THAT BUT....THIS NEW JOB COMES with better pay and a better title.
NobodyAT THIS OLD JOB can pay them anymore.
Nobody there can fire them anymore.
But if they keep showing up anyway....
they'll keep living like they're still on that old payroll.
OH COME ON....I KNOW THAT SOUNDS RIDICULOUS...BELCAUSE IT IS...
BUT THIS IS what verse 13 is warning against —
not a threat to your standing.....but a call to stop reporting for duty to a master...
who no longer has any authority to give you orders.
"Paul doesn't want you to just know what you're free from.
He wants you to know exactly who you've become.
And that's where this passage gets SO GOOD."
The Sonship You Didn't Earn
The Sonship You Didn't Earn
Verse 15:
15 For you did not receive the spirit of bondage again to fear, but you received the Spirit of adoption by whom we cry out, “Abba, Father.”
The word for "adoption" here is huiothesia (WHO-EE-O-THESEEA) —
a compound of huios ("son") and thesis ("a placing").
WATCH THIS.....
Literally:
the placing of a son.
It only appears five times in the entire New Testament,
and every single time, it's Paul using it (Romans 8:15, 23; 9:4; Galatians 4:5; Ephesians 1:5).
This wasn't a term he invented casually.
He was borrowing it directly from Roman courtroom procedure,
once you understand what it meant there....
you'll never read this verse the same way.
WATCH THIS...
In Roman law, adoption wasn't a backup plan for people who couldn't have biological children. (NOT LIKE TODAY)
It was often a deliberate legal strategy — a father formally, publicly declaring before a magistrate and witnesses that a person outside his bloodline was now his heir.
WATCH THIS.....SOO GOOD
THIS IS A detail almost NOBODY TALKS ABOUT:
under Roman law.....
a biological son could be disinherited.
BUT.....An adopted son could not.
When someone was adopted:
They lost their old identity.
Legally:
previous family ties ended
old debts were generally canceled
former inheritance rights disappeared
they entered a completely new family
OH COME ON SOMEBODY......
DOES THIS Sound familiar?
Paul says:
17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.
AS ADOPTED SONS AND DAUGHTERS.....
AS ADOPTED SONS AND DAUGHTERS.....
WE received a new identity.
AS adopted CHILDREN WE receive:
the father's name
full legal rights
full inheritance
CHURCH....
There were no "second-class" adopted children.
ADOPTED CHILDREN WERE IN WAYS....
more secure than being born into the family
Let that settle for a second:
You are not in God's house because you snuck in.
You are not staying because you've behaved well enough to earn your keep.
You were legally, permanently placed —
and under the law that governs this kind of placement,
that status CANNOT be revoked.
YOU WERE CHOSEN!
OH COME ON SOMEBODY......CAN WE GIVE THE LORD SOME PRAISE????
This is why Paul contrasts it IN ROM 8:15 with....
"the spirit of bondage again to fear" in the same verse.
A slave lives every day wondering if.....
today is the day they get sold, dismissed, or replaced.
A son doesn't operate from that anxiety —
not because nothing bad ever happens,
but because his place in the family was never up for renegotiation.
And then comes the word that seals it:
Abba.
This IS A.... Aramaic word
IT appears only three times in the whole New Testament —
Jesus uses it in Gethsemane praying to His Father (Mark 14:36),
36 “Abba, Father,” he said, “everything is possible for you. Take this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will.”
and Paul uses it here and in Galatians 4:6
6 Because you are his sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, “Abba, Father.”
IN STUDYING.....
I FOUND THAT.....Scholars are careful to point out THE FACT THAT....
Abba isn't baby talk —
it's not the equivalent of "Daddy" in the, nursery sense.
It was the respectful, intimate address THAT an adult child used with a father they trusted completely —
a word that.....
"affirms both respect in addressing a superior
and a DEEP personal relationship"
It's the same word Jesus used WHEN HE FACED the cross.
And the Spirit inside you cries the exact same word —
because you've been given the exact same access TO GOD THE FATHER
Verse 16 confirms IT’S NOT just a legal document sitting in a drawer somewhere:
16 The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God,
This isn't a feeling you manufacture.
It's a testimony THAT the Spirit actively gives —
an internal confirmation running alongside the external, legal reality.
"A placement this permanent isn't.....JUST about identity.
It comes with something attached to it —
something Paul saves for the very last verse of this section.
LETS TALK ABOUT IT.....
The Inheritance You Now Share
The Inheritance You Now Share
THIS IS SO GOOD....
Verse 17:
17 and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him, that we may also be glorified together.
....WORSHIP TEAM JOIN ME....
This isn't new territory for God.
Long before Paul wrote this,
God had already called an entire nation His son.
In Exodus, before Pharaoh, God says plainly:
22 Then you shall say to Pharaoh, ‘Thus says the Lord: “Israel is My son, My firstborn.
Corporate adoption, national sonship, inherited promise —
this pattern didn't start with the church.
It started in a slave nation in Egypt that God claimed as family...
before they'd done a single thing to deserve it.
Notice the order:
God called them His firstborn son while they were still slaves under Pharaoh,
still making bricks,
still years away from the Red Sea.
Sonship came before deliverance.....not after it.
OH MY LORD....HELP US GET THIS....
That's the same order Paul is describing here —
you were named before you were finished changing.
Paul makes the same argument to the Galatians in almost identical language:
4 But when the fullness of the time had come, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, 5 to redeem those who were under the law, that we might receive the adoption as sons.
6 And because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying out, “Abba, Father!” 7 Therefore you are no longer a slave but a son, and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ.
Paul even illustrates it earlier in that letter through Sarah and Hagar —
the slave woman's (HAGAR) son and the free woman's (SARAH) son — REMEMBER THE STORY.....
THIS WAS to show that inheritance was never about bloodline effort,
IT WAS about the promise (Galatians 4:21-31).
But notice THIS.....
Paul doesn't let inheritance sound like an easy upgrade.
HE SAYS......"Joint-heirs with Christ"
THIS comes attached to......"if indeed we suffer with Him."
OH COME ON...THAT’S GOOD STUFF....WE NEED TO HEAR THIS
Being placed in this family doesn't exempt you from hardship —
it means you inherit hardship the same way you inherit glory:
alongside Christ,
not instead of Him carrying it for you.
This is why.....and we’ll talk about this next week...
BUT Paul spends the rest of the chapter dealing honestly....
with present suffering and future glory.
BECAUSE LISTEN TO ME....I KNOW THIS ISN’T POPULAR
I’M DONE WITH PEOPLE PREACHING JUST WHAT FEELS GOOD...
YOU NEED TRUTH.....
THERE IS GLORY.....IN YOUR PAIN....GLORY IN YOUR SUFFERING FOR CHRIST
.....STAND TO YOUR FEET .......
.....STAND TO YOUR FEET .......
IT’S TIME WE LIVE Like the Papers Are Already Signed
IT’S TIME WE LIVE Like the Papers Are Already Signed
YOU HAVE TO stop auditioning for a place YOU already legally hold.
I WANT TO LEAVE YOU WITH THIS today.
So many believers live like foster children in God's house —
grateful, but nervous.
Behaving well because they're scared of being sent back.
Working to prove they belong, when the belonging was never up for a vote.
If you've been operating out of fear this week —
I’M TALKING ABOUT THE fear of being found out,
THE fear of losing your place,
THE fear that one more failure disqualifies you —
THAT IS the spirit of bondage Paul says you didn't receive.
If you've been quietly performing for a Father who already signed the papers,
you can stop auditioning.
The adoption isn't pending. It's finalized,
and under the law that governs it.....THE WORD OF GOD......WATCH THIS....
it cannot be undone.
CAN YOU GIVE THE LORD SOME PRAISE IN THIS HOUSE
ALTAR CALL......
EVERY HEAD BOWED AND EYE CLOSED
if you're in a season of suffering right now,
don't read that as evidence you've been abandoned.
Paul says suffering is actually A part of what confirms you're walking the same road Christ walked —
IT’S not proof you've been left out of the family,
IT’S proof you're deep inside THE FAMILY.
IF YOU’RE HERE AND YOU’VE BEEN STRUGGLING WITH THOUGHTS OF....
YOUR NOT GOOD ENOUGH
OR THOUGHTS THAT GOD HAS ABANDONDED YOU....
THESE ALTARS ARE OPEN.....
WE WANT TO PRAY FOR YOU AND WITH YOU..... AGAINST THE LIES OF THE ENEMY
WOULD YOU COME
IF YOU HAVE BEEN SERVING GOD OR TRYING TO PERFORM AND EARN HIS APPROVAL.....THESE ALTARS ARE OPEN..
THIS IS THE LIE OF THE ENEMY
FOR YOU ARE SONS AND DAUGHTERS OF JESUS CHRIST
YOU HAVE BEEN ADOPTED BY HIM AND MADE HEIRS TO HIS KINGDOM
HE LOVES YOU AND CALLS YOU HIS OWN
CLOSING PRAYER............
The debt is cancelled.
The name has changed.
The Spirit inside you is already crying "Abba, Father"
whether you feel it strongly today or not.
Next week we follow Paul into that inheritance —
the groaning that comes before the glory.
But for today, WE LEAVE here walking like heirs.
not like orphans.
