03-20-11 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 into 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

onto 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 then go on to tell you that 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

that 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.

Some of you right now 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 why do you hurt?

You hurt because your child has just recently entered young adulthood

and is in the process of breaking ties with your daily family structure.

And now, for the first time ever

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 no longer squeals too fast 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

and 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.