Sermon text: Romans 8:28-39
The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen. Amen.
In Romans 8:32 of the epistle lesson this morning, Paul wrote that God did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for all of us — gave him into death. Death on a cross. Verse 28 says, “We know that for those who love God, all things work together for the good, for those who are called according to his purpose.” Yet God gave Christ into the cross to suffer. But the suffering we worry more about is our own. We have to endure all kinds of hardships throughout life. And no hardship is worse than the one that befalls us. Even Christ Jesus, God’s own Son, wasn’t spared suffering. But somehow we think we’re entitled to it. In fact, it was for this purpose that the Son of God came into the world in the first place: to suffer and to die for us and for our sins. We know the reason for Christ’s suffering. Perhaps that’s why when it happens to us, when we suffer, our faith is tested. We want to know why. Why now? Why me? Why us? Why not someone else?
When you’re in the midst of suffering, do you worry that God has given up on you? That he has finally had enough and he’s ready to kick you to the curb because you’ve sinned over and over and over again? Imagine if God sat up there in heaven and just thought, “Oh my, there he goes again. I’ve told him enough times to obey those commandments and he just can’t seem to do it. What am I going to do with this one? How could God put up with such Christians as us? Pretty bad at being Christians. We break every one of those commandments willingly, frequently, daily.” Or maybe you think God has forgotten all about you in times of trouble. Look at all the troubles you’ve had in life. You don’t have enough money. Your income is going down. Expenses are going up. Your health — well, that’s one thing that can be taken away by the slip of a step. Your life is a mess. Some of you have — some of the people closest to you have deserted you in tough times. And you think that maybe God’s deserted you, too. He doesn’t seem to care. Nothing seems to change. It seems to be a treadmill. Around and around and around we go. We look at troubles of life and ask, “Where is God in all of my troubles? Why isn’t he doing something for me about it?” We feel the pains of our conscience and our heart. What kind of Christian am I? How can God accept me? And we feel distant from God, separated from him. We wonder and we worry.
It’s to people like that that Paul wrote the eighth chapter of the epistle to the Romans. It was written to Christians who were wondering and worried whether God was really with them and whether God still loved them. St. Paul declares today that God’s love for us in Christ Jesus is inseparable, unbreakable, infinite, inseparable. Nothing, Paul writes, nothing at all will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Sometimes we get so caught up in our troubles that we lose sight of that fundamental truth. We forget the purpose for which Christ came into the world in the first place and what he was made to suffer on our behalf, so that we would not have to suffer with him in that way. We think his love might be there for some people, good Christians, but we begin to wonder: what about the likes of me? I’m not a good enough Christian. My life seems to be without purpose. It doesn’t seem to be improving. I guess God doesn’t really care about me, at least not for me.
The people to whom Paul was writing, though — Christians in Rome in the first century — would need to know that God’s love was in fact inseparable from them, because their troubles were about to begin in the mid first century. Persecution was brewing, and not many years from the writing of the apostle’s epistle, many Christians would be made to suffer and die for their faith. The Roman emperor Nero used Christians in his garden as torches at night to light the garden. Nero enjoyed tying Christians to the post and lighting them up. He blamed Christians for just about anything and everything that went wrong in his empire in Rome. They became the whipping boys. They were made to suffer at his whim, and he took great pleasure in it. Paul himself would be imprisoned for his Christian faith and eventually be executed for his trust in Jesus Christ. When the early Christians were facing this kind of hostility, violence and persecution, you can see how they might have thought they had fallen for the Jesus hopes: Believe in Jesus and everything will be much better for you. You’ll be richer, happier, prettier, stronger, healthier, if you just do what Jesus tells you to do. That’s this fellow Jesus. They began to wonder if it was worth dying for.
On the other hand, though, when you’re convinced that God’s love is utterly inseparable from you and you from his love, that Christ Jesus really did die and rose for you and forgives your sins and has promised you a heavenly life, eternal life in his presence, then you can believe a bit more easily that God is in fact watching out for you in Christ Jesus. What is it that convinces us, by the way, that God’s love is inseparable? It’s the gospel itself: the good news of what God has done for you, for me, for the world in the person and the work of Jesus Christ. The word of the gospel has the power itself to convince you of the gospel truth. It’s an axiom, a theological axiom in the scriptures: God requires and demands faith, but God also gives that which he commands. True Christian faith in the gospel of Jesus Christ. God gives what he demands, namely holiness, righteousness, innocence, and true Christian faith. He does that in the word of the gospel itself. And this word of God, the gospel, gives certainty to us.
Paul wrote, “We know that for those who love God, all things work together for the good, for those who are called according to his purpose. For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom he predestined he also called. And those whom he called he also justified. And those whom he justified he also glorified.” We love God because he first loved us. God loved us from before the foundation of the world was made. He made a plan for our salvation before the foundation of the world was made. He planned to send his Son into the world to be our Savior before the foundation of the world was made. This he did in the person and the work of our Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus accomplished everything we need to be put right with God. He did all. We did nothing. Christ died on the cross to take the punishment that we deserve as sinners. Jesus endured the ultimate separation from God when he cried out, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” Jesus experienced that forsakenness so that you and I would never be forsaken by our heavenly Father. But having suffered, Jesus then shouted, “It is finished.” And it is no more separation. God and sinner reconciled. We have peace with God on account of Jesus Christ. We have the love of God on account of Jesus Christ. We have our daily bread on account of the love of God in Jesus Christ. God has called you to faith in this Jesus. The Holy Spirit has called you by the gospel, enlightened you with his gifts. In baptism, God claimed you as his child, gave you the gift of saving faith, made you a member of his holy family. He put his name on you: Christian, Christlike. You belong to him, and he’s not going to forsake you now. He purposed you and all your times, good and bad, for your good and to his purpose. You have been called. You have been justified. You have been glorified for Christ’s sake. God declares you not guilty. Declares you to be righteous in his sight. And because you have been justified, you are also glorified. God will raise you up to live with him in his heavenly abode forever, in glorified bodies, in a restored creation, with all the saints from all times and places. Because God has said it, it’s as good as done. You have God’s word on it.
Paul isn’t done though. He has more to say on this topic. He writes, “What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died — more than that, who was raised — who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us.” God’s love is inseparable. God will not condemn you. Your sins are forgiven. He is for you and intercedes on your behalf, praying with groans too deep for us to understand. Even if other people are against you, God is never against you. The proof of this is the cross of Christ. God didn’t spare his Son to save you from your sins and to give you eternal life. He will not also take care of you and watch out for you day to day. For we pray, “Give us this day our daily bread.” And he does, each and every day. Hold on to that when your circumstances look bleak. When it looks like dinner might not be around the corner. God has not given up on you or abandoned you or forsaken you. No, indeed. In fact, Christ, your ascended Lord, right now is interceding for you with prayers, praying for you, and making sure that you will not fail or fall, but will one day join in the heavenly realm.
Life can be pretty grim. We Christians face a host of troubles in this world. Some we bring on ourselves. Some are thrust upon us by others. Some come from living in a sin-damaged world. This life is truly a veil of tears. We feel it daily. And Paul recognizes this reality. In the midst of all this, he has a word to reassure us. He asks rhetorically, “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? As it is written, ‘For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.’ No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Notice that love is always mediated through Christ Jesus our Lord. Without Christ, there is no love. Inseparable — that’s what it is. Nothing can separate us from God’s love in Christ.
Take the list of woes and expand it. Fit your own situation: problems with health, financial problems, family problems, a bad diagnosis, the loss of a job, the breakup of a marriage, your kids not living up to the expectations that you once had, you yourself not living up to the expectations you had for yourself. The list could go on and be expanded. We as Christians are swimming upstream in a post-Christian culture. The media is against us. The education system is against us. The government is against us. All turning against the church. The rise of Islam in America is against us. The great falling away from the faith and the church in our society is well underway. This is what we are experiencing in our day-to-day lives. It could cause us to lose hope. Where is God? Has he gone on vacation like everybody else in July? He seems so far away.
God wants us to know, though, today, that his love is inseparable from us. He will never leave nor forsake you. Jesus is proof of that himself. Take heart and take hold of that promise, for God is holding on to you and will never let you go.
Four hundred years ago in Germany, there was a man by the name of Paul Gerhardt. When he was a boy, a great war broke out in northern Europe. We now call it the Thirty Years’ War, because that’s how long it would last. The region in which Paul Gerhardt lived was decimated. Thousands died either from the war itself or from disease that followed in its wake. Life was truly miserable day in and day out. And it was particularly miserable for Gerhardt because of the war and the disruption it brought to the land. He couldn’t get a call as a pastor until he was age 44. He wasn’t financially settled enough to get married until he was 47. And his wife bore him five children. Four of them died in infancy or childhood. Life was rough for Paul Gerhardt. But Gerhardt knew that God’s love for him was inseparable, and he rejoiced in that fact despite all that befell him and his family, in spite of many troubles. Gerhardt wrote many hymns in our hymnal to express the beautiful comfort of the gospel. He wrote this one in particular, “If God Himself Be for Me” — it’s based on Romans chapter 8. Listen to how he praises the Lord, and remember all of the trials he once faced:
No angel and no gladness,
No throne, no pomp, no show,
No love, no hate, no sadness,
No pain, no depth of woe,
No scheming, no contriving,
No subtle thing or great
Shall draw me from Thy guiding,
Nor from Thee separate.
My heart with joy is springing;
I am no longer sad.
My soul is filled with singing;
Thy sunshine makes me glad.
The sun that cheers my spirit
Is Jesus Christ, my King;
The heaven I shall inherit
Makes me rejoice and sing.
You and God’s love are inseparable. Even when you think it is — even in your worst times — God comes to you with his forgiving word in Jesus Christ alone. No one and nothing will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Because your sins have been forgiven, and your present suffering is nothing compared to the future glory that he will give to you on that day when he calls you forth from your grave. Your sins are forgiven. The love is inseparable. Amen.
May the peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.