Years ago, when one of my kids was just a little thing, we had a ceiling fan in the living room.   One day, my kid was sitting there with a little plastic ball.  Out of the blue, I was watching him, he threw it up.  PING it ricocheted right off the fan back down to the floor.  We both laughed.  BIG MISTAKE.  He grabbed the ball and did it again only this time it hit the window, hard.  I was worried about him breaking something so I told him to stop.  A few moments later, I hear, PING, he’s done it again.

            This time, I’m serious.  Ben, you’ve got to quit.  BING.  Finally, I go with my best DAD’s IN CHARGE VOICE.  BEN STOP THAT NOW.  And it worked…for a bit.

            After a while, I went into the kitchen.  After a few moments of fixing dinner, what should I hear? 

            BING!

            It’s funny but I think, wow, that’s really my kid.

            But it highlights a problem we have with sin.  We say we don’t want it but, oh my goodness, how often do we find ourself treading the familiar path.  How often are we just waiting for the opportunity for us to fling our own plastic balls up towards the ceiling fan? 

            There is good news for us today in this morning’s new Testament reading, especially if you find yourself backsliding into sin. 

            Romans 8:1-8 – “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. 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.  For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace.  For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot.  Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.”

I confess that this particular illustration presumes something.  Now, I don’t think it’s the kind of assumption that will limit the number of people who understand it.  It isn’t as though I’m assuming that y’all have read Karl Barth’s 10-volume Church Dogmatics, I know I haven’t. 

            But the assumption is that every single one of you here has been to a particular restaurant indigenous to the Southern United States.  It’s a magical place where you can actually watch your food being made by machine.  I speak, of course, of Krispy Kreme doughnuts.   And that’s spelled D-O-U-G-H-N-U-T in case any of you were wondering. 

            Yes, Krispy Kreme.  I begin there because there’s a sensation that I get that I’ll bet you do, too, every single time you walk in the door to a Krispy Kreme doughnuts.  You take a big ole’ smell walking in the door. 
            “AHHHHHH”

            Isn’t that how you feel?  I mean, it doesn’t matter that the kids have been acting up or that your boss is on your case or the stock market is in the toilet, walk in a door at a local Krispy Kreme and, ahh, there it is.  That warm, wonderful sensation that everything is going to be all right.  After all, if there is something in this world as good as a Hot DOUGHNUT NOW, then everything I say about God from the Bible makes perfect sense, doesn’t it?  I mean, if there is something as good as a freshly fried and glazed KK doughnut, there simply has to be a good God and a good God would come up with a solution for the problem of sin.

            AND HE HAS.

            That’s why Paul can begin chapter 8 of Romans with such a supreme, relieving declaration – “There is therefore NOW, no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”

            In Romans chapters 7 through 9, Paul is answering a fairly thorny theological problem.  He’s explaining the role of God’s salvation to the Jews.  After all, God has made promises to the Jews and Paul wants to show that the new covenant doesn’t simply negate the old covenants with God.  But, to that end, Paul is going to write some of the most comforting Scriptures in the entirety of our canon.  Romans 8 is, for those who know it, pure comfort for us who stand within a world broken by sin.