©2001 Larry Huntsperger Peninsula Bible Fellowship
|
9/9/01 |
The Love Of Christ |
Romans 8:35-39 |
9/9/01
The Love of Christ...
ROM 8:35 Who will separate us from the love of Christ?
We come this morning to the jewel
placed by Paul in
the setting
he has been
constructing for us
for
the first 8 chapters of the book of Romans.
It is a remarkable jewel,
an amazing jewel,
a jewel
that, when seen in the light of truth,
shines as none other could ever shine.
If you have been with us in this study the past few weeks,
you will remember
what Paul is doing
in these
final verses of Romans chapter 8.
He made it clear to us
with his opening
words to this section
in Romans
8:31.
He said, “What then shall we say to these things?...”
And with those words
he offers us the
assurance that,
just in
case we got lost,
or
confused,
or distracted as we worked our way through
all that he was saying
throughout these
first 8 chapters,
he was
going to pull the heart of it together in just a few words
and
hand it to us in a way
that no one could ever misunderstand.
And then, to increase the power of his words,
he selected a
communication form
that not
only communicates content,
but
that does so in a way that allows that content to get inside us.
Through a series of remarkable questions,
questions that
contain within themselves
the answers
to the questions being asked,
Paul allows his
readers
not just to
be told the truth,
but
to actually tell ourselves the truth
as we answer these questions for ourselves
in our own minds.
And these are the questions we’ve looked at so far:
1. ROM 8:31 If God is for us, who is against us?
2. ROM 8:32 He who did not spare His own Son, but
delivered Him over for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all
things?
3. ROM 8:33-34 Who will bring a charge against God's
elect? God is the one who justifies; who is the one who condemns?
And now, this morning,
we come to the
final great question,
the one to
which Paul has been moving us from the very beginning.
Who will separate us from the love of Christ?
Sometimes when I begin my preparation for our time together
what I want to
say
and the way
I want to say it comes easily.
And then there are days like this,
days when I know
how much the passage matters,
and I know,
too, how difficult it may be
for
me to present the truth
in a way that allows that truth to do in
us what it was designed to do.
And as we move into these closing verses of Romans
I need to let you
know
that there
are two distinct steps we must walk through
in
our relationship to the words Paul has written.
First of all we want to see the truth itself,
to see it with
absolute clarity,
without
doubt,
without qualification,
without confusion.
That will be the fun part.
But then comes the second step,
the step in which
Paul takes that truth
and places
it into real life.
That part is going to be harder,
not because it
alters the truth in any way,
but because
it will require us to be honest
about the true nature of the Christian
life.
But we’ll start with the truth itself.
And it is found
in Paul’s opening question,
“Who will separate us from the love of Christ?”.
And if you’ve been with us in this study
you know by now
that Paul’s
question is rhetorical,
and
the answer is clear - there is no one who can ever separate the child of God
from the love of Christ.
But just so that there can be no misunderstanding,
before Paul
finishes the passage
he says it
right out.
He says,
ROM 8:38 For I am convinced that neither death, nor life,
nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers,
ROM 8:39 nor height, nor depth, nor any other created
thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ
Jesus our Lord.
You see, this is the truth to which
Paul has been
wanting to move our minds
since the
first verse of the first chapter of Romans.
If Paul was forced to take the entire Christian message
and squeeze it
down into a single sentence,
I believe
this is the sentence he would select.
This is what it’s all about -
our Creator
offering to each of us
a way in
which we can first enter into His love,
and then live
there forever,
without
fear of His rejection,
without fear of His wrath,
without the fear that there is something
we can do,
or fail to do,
or
something someone else can do
that
will cause Him to turn away from us,
or pull us out of
His grip.
Simply stated,
this is what
Christ accomplished for those who come to Him.
By taking our sin upon Himself - all of it,
and then paying
the debt for that sin in full,
He granted
to each of us who come to Him
true, literal, eternal peace with God,
and entrance into a union with Him
that is based not upon our performance,
but rather upon
His grace -
as Paul
puts it, “...this grace in which we stand...”
And I want us to walk carefully through Paul’s wording
as he seeks to
bring home
what he’s
trying to say.
He wants no misunderstanding.
He says,
For I am convinced that neither death,
nor life,
nor
angels,
nor
principalities,
nor things present,
nor things to come,
nor powers,
nor height,
nor
depth,...
and then,
just so
that there are no other escape-hatches for us from the truth,
he adds one
more...
nor any other created thing,
will be able to separate us from the love of God, which
is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
From the day of our creation
our God has loved
us.
Our acceptance of His offer
to place our sins
onto the
account of Christ
has removed forever the barrier
that kept us from
knowing that love.
And now nothing and no one will ever again be able to remove
us from that love.
Now, if that was all Paul said in these final verses,
and if I could
just wrap this up right here
and we
could all go home with a renewed confidence in the love of our God for us,
that
would be great.
But there is something else going on in this passage,
something that
makes this passage
far more
difficult to teach.
For, you see, Paul takes this truth -
the truth of
God’s eternal love for us -
and he then
places that truth
into
the setting of the life we are called to live in this world.
And what we see there
can’t help but
cause us some questions
and some
confusion.
And this is what he says:
ROM 8:35 Who will separate us from the love of Christ?
Now, there is the question to which we have already seen the
answer.
But then, from there
Paul goes
directly into all of those things
that cause
us to question the very truth we’ve just accepted.
Here we are,
assured by God
Himself
that those
of us who are in Christ
will never ever again
have to fear that anything will separate us from the love of
God.
But then, suddenly Paul turns the spotlight full
on all those
things
that cause
our minds to doubt God’s love.
Will tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine,
or nakedness, or peril, or sword? Just as it is written, "For Your sake we
are being put to death all day long; We were considered as sheep to be
slaughtered."
Now, if I wanted to find some way around admitting the
truth,
I could pretend
that Paul wrote these words
during a
unique period of church history
a
time when Christians really were
in daily peril for their lives,
a time when their execution for their
faith was common,
but his comments
are very cultural
and limited
in their application
and
we certainly don’t need to focus too much on them today.
But to do so would rip the heart out of the truth
Paul is offering
to us here.
It is true that those of you listening to me right now
are not in danger
of martyrdom for your faith in Christ.
It is also true that we still live in a society
that gives us
tremendous freedom
to worship
our Lord openly.
But there are some other things on that list of Paul’s
that are very
much a part of our lives.
The first two are inescapable
no matter what
culture we live in.
Tribulation and distress...
And let me just state clearly
what Paul is
getting at
when he
says what he says here.
He is telling us that our union with Christ
does not alter
the world in which we live.
And because we live in this world,
a certain amount
of pain
and a
certain amount of suffering
will be a part of every Christian’s life.
Every time we love another human being
we open ourselves
up to the possibility of pain.
And the more deeply we love,
the greater the
potential for us to hurt.
And, wouldn’t you know it,
the only
commandment our Lord ever gave His people
was that we
love one another.
Let me see if I can make it real practical.
This is the first week in September.
Some of you are
right in the middle
of some of
the greatest distress you’ve ever known.
Your health is fine.
Your finances are
OK.
Anyone
looking on from the outside
would have difficulty understanding why
you’re having any trouble at all.
And yet, right now, this morning, you hurt.
The word “distress”
doesn’t even
begin to capture
what’s
going on inside you.
And all of that pain
is a direct
result of your having done well
the very
thing your God gave you to do-
you
loved those that He placed into your care.
And now, for the first time in 18 years,
they have moved
out of your house,
and taken a
huge step toward moving out of your life,
and
it hurts - it hurts all day long.
You catch yourself listening for the sound of that car
that will no
longer squeal into the driveway,
and the
empty chair at the dinner table
just
stares back at you night after night.
Now I know that we make little jokes in our culture
about the
adjustment to the empty nest,
and pretend
that it’s no big deal,
but
the truth is,
Joni’s first year in college
was in many ways
the most pain-filled year I’d ever known,
and all the
more because it was not an easy year for her.
It was during that year
that we
introduced a new song to our fellowship, “I Will Praise You Still”.
When the morning falls on the farthest hill,
I will sing Your Name, I will praise You still.
When dark trials come and my heart is filled
With the weight of doubt, I will praise You still.
For O Lord our God, you are strong to save
From the arms of death, from the deepest grave,
And You gave us life in Your perfect will,
And by Your good grace, I will praise You still.
The words to that song
captured so much
of what was going on inside me during that time.
And the departure of a child
is just one tiny
event
in the
whole spectrum of human experience.
And my point is simply this:
pain is pain, no
matter what’s causing it,
and there
are times when pain will be a part
of
the life of every child of God
who is walking with his or her Lord.
We may not live in a culture
in which those we
love
are being
shredded by lions
because of their faith,
but if we choose to love deeply,
as our God has
called us to do,
there will
be times when it feels as if our hearts are being shredded by lions.
And, when Paul gives his final great proclamation of the
love of our God for the people of God,
he wraps that
proclamation
in the
inescapable reality of our pain.
But that is not where he stops.
Certainly he affirms
that pain will be
an unavoidable part of our lives.
But then he goes on to tell us
the two things we
need most of all to hear
and to
understand.
First of all,
those things that
cause us pain
will never
ever have the power
to
separate us from the love of our God.
In fact,
it works exactly
the opposite.
Nothing draws us to our Lord more powerfully
than does our
pain.
Nothing cleanses us more quickly
of all the stuff
that doesn’t really matter
than does
our pain.
Nothing gives us a hunger,
a desperate
desire to cling to our God,
to share
ourselves with Him,
and
to pray for the ones we love like our pain.
And nothing gives us a driving desire to know our God is
real,
and is able to
save,
and to show
Himself strong than does our pain.
Paul makes no attempt at explaining
the existence of
pain in the believer’s life.
It is simply a given
of life in this
world as it now exists.
And no one is exempt.
But, when Paul talks with us
about the love of
our God for us,
the first
thing He wants us to know
is
that those things that cause us pain
will never ever have the power
to separate us
from the love of our God.
But that isn’t where Paul stops.
There is one more
verse in this passage
that we
need to look at before we close,
a verse that contains the second vital truth
about pain and
the love of God
that Paul
wants us to understand.
ROM 8:37 But in all these things we overwhelmingly
conquer through Him who loved us.
Paul carefully phrased that statement
as a bold
proclamation
of the
absolute victory of the love of God in our lives.
We don’t just endure.
We don’t just
make it through.
And we don’t even just conquer.
We overwhelmingly conquer.
And let me tell you what that looks like.
That overwhelming
victory that Paul is talking about
is
something that takes place deep inside us,
something that can only take place
when we have hurt deeply
and, rather than running from the pain,
we have brought
it to our Lord
and shared
it with Him
and
discovered in the process
that He was there,
and that He felt our pain with us,
and that His love,
and His presence
was strong enough to bring us through.
There are things we cannot learn about our God,
or about His love
for us
any other
way than by going through pain with Him
an
finding Him adequate for us
when we needed Him most.
In that process we discover
both the
greatness and the love of our God
at a level
we could never know any other way.
ROM 8:35 Who will separate us from the love of Christ?
Will tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or
peril, or sword?
ROM 8:36 Just as it is written, "For Your sake we
are being put to death all day long; We were considered as sheep to be
slaughtered."
ROM 8:37 But in all these things we overwhelmingly
conquer through Him who loved us.
ROM 8:38 For I am convinced that neither death, nor life,
nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor
powers,
ROM 8:39 nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.