An anchor and a rudder

Video
Sermon: Sunday, 12th January, 2025
Speaker: John Johnstone
Scripture: Romans 8:1-4

1. An anchor

We all know how important anchors are to give ships stability allowing them to securely hold their position and to stop them from drifting dangerously into rocks or other vessels. Sometimes there are strong winds or currents or tides that push against a ship or a boat. You need to make sure your anchor has been dropped, to keep both you and your boat safe. When it comes to the Christian life, stability is extremely important. We need certain spiritual anchors, which are the promises of God, to give us assurance of our salvation and to provide stability in the storms of life. Sometimes these storms can be long-lasting and ferocious. Our circumstances might be so tough that we think God must be against us, or must have forgotten us, or doesn’t really love us.

The old hymn asks the question:
‘Will your anchor hold in the storms of life,
when the clouds unfold their wings of strife?
When the strong tides lift, and the cables strain,
will your anchor drift, or firm remain?’

The answer is given:
‘We have an anchor that keeps the soul,
steadfast and sure while the billows roll,
fastened to the Rock which cannot move,
grounded firm and deep in the Saviour’s love.’

Romans chapter 8 begins with one of the most magnificent anchors of God’s love in all the Bible. These 12 words can keep us stable when circumstances seem against us or when Satan is dredging up our weaknesses and sins of the past: ‘There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.’

No condemnation! If you knew how black my heart has been, even as a Christian, then you’d realise how much these words mean to me. I ought to be condemned by God. I agree with the Psalmist; ‘If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand?’   (Psalm 130:3) In Romans chapters 1 to 3, we explored how both pagans and the religious fall well short of God’s standards. We live in a world full of pride, greed, racism, exploitation, hatred and lust. The truth is, these vices aren’t just in the hearts of other people- they are in our hearts too. There’s something in us all that wants to dethrone God and put ourselves on the throne instead. We wrongly think freedom means pushing God out of the centre and occupying the centre ourselves. However, the reality is that this results in selfishness and slavery rather the freedom we think we will get. Only lives centred in Jesus can experience true and lasting freedom.

Even Christians still behave in shocking ways and were it not for God’s grace would still deserve to be condemned. Think of Peter denying he even knew Jesus. I can think of my own life and the catalogue of wrongdoing in the book of my Christian life. There’s a lot from my past which Satan can dig up and hold before my face. And he does. And I need to say to him, ‘Yes, but there’s now no condemnation for me, not because I deserve pardon, but because I am now in Christ Jesus.’ I never need to fear being rejected by God. I never need to fear being condemned by God. Why? Because Jesus has already been condemned in my place. He was condemned for me, and that’s why there’s no condemnation to be experienced. What an anchor!

Again, the hymn says: ‘grounded firm and deep in the Saviour’s love’. That’s exactly right. ‘For what the law was powerless to do because it was weakened by the flesh, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh to be a sin offering.’   (Romans 8:3) In love, God the Father sent Jesus to be our ‘sin offering’. In other words, he would die on the cross in our place, paying the price for sin. And as we need to remind ourselves again and again, God never demands payment twice. That’s unfair. If you pay a bill in a restaurant, you don’t have to pay it again. Bills are settled once. Jesus has settled our account and so nothing more can be demanded of us, and thus rather than being condemned we are in fact justified – made right in the eyes of God.

The hymn ‘Before the throne’ puts it so well:
‘When Satan tempts me to despair, and tells me of the guilt within,
upward I look and see Him there who made an end to all my sin.
Because the sinless Saviour died, my sinful soul is counted free,
or God the Just is satisfied to look on Him and pardon me.’

God has given the verdict ‘not guilty’.

Let me be more personal. Is this an anchor you have in your life? Can you say with confidence that you don’t need to fear God’s judgment and that you will never be condemned by God? Let’s take a closer look to remind ourselves of who is able to say this wonderful thing. Look at the end of verse 1. It is for those who are ‘in Christ Jesus’. The ESV translates verse 2 better, and we hear the same phrase: ‘For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death.’

There’s only one place to be in all the world if we want to be free from condemnation, and that is ‘in Christ’. The ‘not guilty’ verdict is not found in the false religions of the world or in humanism or paganism or agnosticism. The Bible is clear. You must be ‘in Christ’. What does this mean to be ‘in Christ’? It means we trust that he is King and that he died on the cross for our sins. Christianity is not a bunch of rules or a philosophy but rather a relationship of trust, where we rest on the work Jesus has already done on the cross.

Here’s the good news – let’s allow it to sink in – we are free from the penalty of our own sin. The hymn Man of sorrows says this:
‘Bearing shame and scoffing rude,
in my place condemned he stood,
sealed my pardon with his blood:
Hallelujah, what a Saviour!’

2. A rudder

It is indeed wonderful news that there is no condemnation for those who rest in Christ. However, imagine a prisoner who has been imprisoned for serious crimes. He receives a pardon from the prime minister; however, he remains locked up in jail. That would not be ideal predicament: ‘Yes, you are free from the guilt of these crimes, but you will remain imprisoned.’ The stunning thing about how God treats us in Christ is that he not only frees us from the penalty of sin saying ‘No condemnation’, he also frees us from the power of sin, by filling us with the Holy Spirit. God’s Holy Spirit gives us the desire to do what is right and opposes our old sinful desires to do what is wrong.

A rudder is the part of a ship which controls its direction and allows it to change course. Before we trusted in Christ, we were unable to change course in our own strength.

John Flavel: ‘We are more able to stop the sun in its course or make rivers flow uphill, as by our own skill and power to rule and order our hearts.’

In other words, we cannot really change within, in our hearts, without God’s power. Let’s make this statement more positively – we must never think as Christians that we cannot change for the better. You can change. With the Holy Spirit within us, we can change for the better. We can have more of the love and forgiveness and peace of Jesus in our hearts. Before the Spirit of Jesus was in our hearts, the 10 Commandments were just a reminder of how far short we fall from God’s standards. But what does the Holy Spirit do with these commandments? The prophet Jeremiah speaks of the blessings of the new covenant: ‘But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people.’   (Jeremiah 31:33) The Spirit gives us new desires and inclinations and empowers us to root sin out of our lives.

You cannot change for the better just by trying really hard to obey God’s rules. ‘For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.’   (Romans 8:2-4)

Before, we were unable to keep God’s rules. The problem wasn’t with the law. The law is good. The problem was our sinful flesh was unable to obey it. We needed an external power outside of ourselves. We needed the power of God. God enables us to walk according to the Spirit.

John Owen: ‘Our minds now, have a new saving supernatural light to enable them to think and act spiritually.’

Before we were Christians, the master of the house was the evil one. We were under his dominion, and the evidence of this was that we lived for ourselves and pushed God out of the centre. But now we have a new master of the house, and that is the Holy Spirit. Yes, there’s still an unwelcome guest in our house, a squatter – that’s our sinful nature. He’s guest to get rid of. In fact, it’s only in Heaven that we’ll be totally free of him. But although the change is not total, it is nonetheless enormous.

I’ve been a Christian for well over 40 years. I’m ashamed how little progress I’ve made in some of those years. I think I spent too much of it trying to change myself, rather than coming to Jesus and asking for his help. Perhaps you can relate to that. But let’s really let this sink in, we’ve been given not only a wonderful anchor in our justification, but we’ve also been given a new rudder – the Holy Spirit. Will you open your Bibles through the week and listen to the Spirit speaking to you? And when Scripture comes to mind and you feel the Spirit prompting you to do something, or not to do something, will you be directed by the Spirit? Will you keep in step with the Spirit? If you are willing to, you can change. You can make real progress. You don’t have to give up.

In the excellent book ‘You can change’, Tim Chester asks: ‘Have you despaired of ever changing? Do you think you are a lost cause? Maybe you think it’s different for you. Other people can change but your history or temptations or problems make it different for you… Only God can bring true and lasting change. And that’s because only God can change our hearts.’

Let’s keep these two images before us. Our anchor is the fact that God will never, ever condemn us. And our guiding rudder in life is now the Holy Spirit. These are great truths which we need to rub into our lives each day. Why did we sing the hymn ‘Rock of Ages’? Because it speaks of Jesus saving us from the guilt of sin (we are not condemned) and also of the power of sin (we have the Spirit):
‘Let the water and the blood,
from thy riven side which flowed,
be of sin the double cure,
save me from its guilt and power.’

Often human beings think their main problem is their unhappiness. ‘If only I could be happy…’ God knows our deepest problem isn’t unhappiness but unrighteousness and powerlessness. So, in his kindness, he provides us with a Saviour and his Spirit. He provides us with exactly what we need. And this leads to our eternal happiness, and more importantly, the glory of God: ‘… the righteous requirement of the law might be fully met in us.’   (Romans 8:4) How good our God is.