Romans 8:26-39
“Victorious Love”
July 24, 2011 - Sixth Sunday after Pentecost

         You click the phone off and sit down with your head in your hands. Maybe it was your landlord calling for the third time about rent you haven’t been able to pay. Or it could have been your doctor’s office with lab results you didn’t want to hear. It might have been the counselor at your child’s school asking for the second conference this month. Or maybe it was your spouse or fiancé phoning to say it’s all over between you.

         When calls like these come, it’s awfully hard to remember that you have received another, better, deeper call. It’s hard to recall that God has called you into grace and peace and hope through Jesus Christ. It’s really, really tough to get perspective enough to see God present in what’s happening to you.

         It’s so tough, Paul knew, that much of the time we don’t even know how to talk to God, how to pray about what’s happening. What do you ask for when you’re going to be evicted or face a painful disease or struggle with son or daughter that’s out of control? What do you pray when the person on earth you love most doesn’t love you anymore?

         So Paul starts there in verse 26 of Romans 8, beginning with our speechless, inarticulate helplessness in the face of life. He offers us a profound assurance that God is with us and God loves us in a way that transcends and overcomes our weakness.

         The first sign is the Holy Spirit, who prays and intercedes for us when we don’t know how or what to say. With “sighs too deep for words,” the Spirit speaks to the Father. And verse 27 says the Father “knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.” When God and God’s will feel dark and cloudy as Oregon skies in the winter, the Spirit shines through to God’s heart and desire for us.

         Lest we doubt that God’s will for us is good, verse 28 proclaims: “We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose.” Paul really means it. It all works together. His own physical infirmities, imprisonments and rejection by authorities worked together for good. Our illnesses and job losses and breakups and breakdowns work together for good.

         The problem for us is that we can’t see what God is doing. He may in fact be working things out for good in our lives, but in the thick of it, you can’t see it. When your house burns or your wife walks out or your car quits running, it’s hard to see where the good in it is. It just feels bad.

         That’s why we read this text in its whole context, which is the whole letter to the Romans. At the very least we have to read the end of the verse and the next verse, “who are called according to his purpose. For those he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn within a large family.” It’s all about that large family. That’s God’s purpose.

         From the very beginning of Romans we’ve seen that God’s plan was to create a family for Himself, a covenant people who would know and love Him. That’s why He created the world. That’s why He called Abraham to be the father of Israel. That’s why right now in Jesus Christ God is bringing the rest of the world together with the Jewish people to be one family. God wants His own beloved Son to have countless brothers and sisters.

         Some of you have watched with us the Swedish film, “The Ox,” by Sven Nykvist. It tells the story of a poor tenant farmer and his family who find themselves starving in the winter of 1867. In a fit of desperation, the husband Helge takes a sledgehammer and kills an ox belonging to his landlord so that he, his wife and their baby daughter can eat.

         Wracked by guilt, Helge finally confesses to the pastor, who convinces him to turn himself in, believing he will receive leniency. They are both stunned when a cruel judge sentences him to life in prison. Helge suffers hard labor and deprivation while his wife endures her own torment and shame in order to survive by herself. Finally the pastor is able to arrange a pardon and Helge is released after a few years. He comes home to find that he must now find it in himself to pardon his wife.

         The movie ends with the couple’s reconciliation. Then we get one more screen, just text that reads, “Helge and Elfrida had eight children. They all behaved well.” After the heartache and struggles just witnessed, it brings a smile, maybe a chuckle to the viewer. But it’s not just a cheap feel-good moment. It’s the point of it all. This film was based on a true story. It’s the history of a family. This is the deep pain and trial out of which they came. And it all comes together in the assurance that the end result was a large, good family.

         That’s what God is up to in this world, in our lives. He’s creating His family, His eternal and beloved family of children conformed to the image of His own beloved Son. It’s a purpose so good, so beautiful, that He will use every possible means to make it happen.

         Part of our problem with believing what Paul says here is that we want to look at it just in terms of our own individual lives. We read “all things work together for good,” and then wonder how it’s all working out for me. How is this pain good for me? How will I benefit from this trial I’m going through? But God’s purpose is bigger than that. It includes you. It includes me. But it’s bigger. It’s the whole family of God’s people.

         God wants to be the Father of a great family, a family of beloved and beautiful children who all take after their older brother who is Christ. And Paul wants to assure us that God can and will make it happen. The family will come together. No one who loves God will be left out. Everyone will be cherished and guarded and loved.

         Don’t try to make too much out of the formula in verse 30, to turn it into some kind of theology of predestination and what sometimes called an “order of salvation.” Predestination, calling, justification, and glorification are all part of what God is doing with us. He knew us from the beginning. His Holy Spirit called us to faith. Jesus the Son died and rose to give us God’s righteousness. And in Christ we receive His own glory. But the point is not the details. It’s the assurance that God is bringing His plan all the way through to the end. His family will arrive in the glory He planned for it from the beginning.

         In verse 31, Paul uses one of his favorite rhetorical questions again, “What then are we to say…?” But this time instead of implying a negative answer itself, he uses it to set up a series of rhetorical questions that all must be answered in the negative.

         The questions start with, “If God is for us, who is against us?” The unstated answer is “no one.” No one can possibly be against us when God is for us. The reason why is verse 32: God has already given up His own Son to die for us, “will he not with him also give us everything else?” If we’ve already received the best God has to give, that is, Jesus, then why worry about the rest? Jesus said, “Seek first the kingdom of God, and all these things will be added to you.”

         Verse 33 asks, “Who will bring any charge against God’s elect?” Again, the answer is “no one.” God has justified, made us righteous in Christ. Who can accuse us? Not even our own guilty consciences will overwhelm us, because Jesus dealt with our sins on the Cross. Then verse 34 poses the question, “Who is to condemn?” Once again, it’s “no one.” The reason again is Jesus. Jesus died and rose and sits on God’s right hand interceding for us.

         Hear the theme? Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. Paul has one answer to all the questions you can ask about what is going on in the world, what is going on in your life. It’s Jesus Christ. But it’s not one-dimensional, simple-minded theology. Christ is really there for you when you feel attacked. Christ truly forgives you when you feel guilty. Christ actually intercedes for you with God when you feel loaded down with worries and sin.

         Which all makes the question of verse 35 the big one: “Who will separate us from the love of Christ?” Paul lists possible candidates, “Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?” The great early Christian bishop and preacher, St. John Chrysostom spoke about “all things work together for good,” and said, “When Paul speaks of all things he mentions even the things that seem painful.”

         Everything works together for good because nothing and no one can separate us from the love of Jesus Christ. Fill in your own list of painful things: cancer, foreclosure, divorce, bankruptcy, abuse, firing, shame, alcohol, loneliness… Whatever terrifies you, whatever worries you, whatever keeps you awake at 3 a.m., put it on the list, because it’s included. None of it can separate you from Christ’s love.

         Keep going back to God’s purpose. He’s creating a family, a family of people like His own Son. If they have troubles and trials and have to learn to live and love each other in spite of all of it, well that only makes them that much more like Jesus. Suffering together in love is the family business. It’s part of what makes us His sisters and brothers.

         In verse 36 Paul ups the ante with a quotation from Psalm 44, “For your sake we are being killed all day long; we are accounted as sheep to be slaughtered.” Even that can’t stop the love of Jesus. Even persecution to death is in the list. And even that cannot separate us from the One who loves us.

         In the fourth century in Constantinople, John Chrysostom preached so strongly against the misuse of wealth that he offended the extravagant Empress Eudoxia. He was summoned before her husband Emperor Arcadius, who threatened him with banishment if he didn’t quit preaching against his wife’s wasted riches.

         John answered, “Sire, you cannot banish me, for the world is my Father’s house.”

         “Then I will kill you,” Arcadius said.

         “No, you cannot, because my life is hidden with Christ in God,” came the answer.

         “Your treasures will be confiscated” was the next threat, to which Chrysostom replied, “Sire, that cannot be either. My treasures are in Heaven, where none can break through or steal.”

         “Then I will drive you from society, and you will have no friends left!” was the final, des­perate warning.

         “That you cannot do, either,” answered Chrysostom, “For I have a friend in Heaven who has said, ‘I will never leave you or forsake you.’”

         Chrysostom was banished, first to Armenia and then further to Pityus on the cold shore of the Black Sea. He died on the way. His last words are said to have been, “Glory be to God for all things.” For all things.

         No, no, no. Verse 37 says, “No, in all these things we are more than conquerors.” In all these things. In all these things God is glorified, because the love of God is working in everything. He’s working through an exile from family and friends. He’s working even through death. He’s working in whatever troubles you.

         Here’s the point of those little parables of Jesus we read this morning. You can barely see the mustard seed when it goes in the ground, but it’s there and growing. That little pinch of yeast gets lost in the batch of dough, but hidden there it makes it all rise. The love of Jesus is at work in your life and world even when you can’t see it.

         God’s family is growing, the loaf of the Body of Christ is rising. That’s what God is doing. It’s an outcome so good and so beautiful that it’s worth the loss of everything we have, like cashing in to buy a hidden treasure or the finest pearl. As we read last week, “the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed in us.” The love of Jesus Christ is a net that gathers us all into His family.

         Verses 38 and 39 of our text finally cover the whole universe as Paul declares his conviction about the love of Jesus, “For I am convinced 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.”

         We make human declarations of love. We start our families vowing that nothing will separate us, “for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health.” In television scenes lovers wrap their arms around each other, parents hug children, an adult daughter takes her elderly mother’s hand, all declaring “I will never leave you. I’ll stay by you. I’ll be here.” Even Harry Potter makes the choice in the end to go back to his friends instead of on into the comfort of death.

         Yet there’s only one person who keeps a vow like that against all odds, against every force in creation. Only Jesus Christ offers us a love that defeats death and makes it absolutely impossible to separate us from Him.

         I don’t know what makes you question God’s work, God’s plan, God’s love. But it’s on the list. It’s on the list of things that will not separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus. Somewhere between life and death, between angels and powers, between present and future, between height and depth, it’s there. And the love of Christ will bring you through it, whatever it is. God keeps His vows to His family. He will keep them to you.

         Brothers and sisters of Jesus, it’s a deep, deep love that brings us together. It’s a victorious love. It makes us victorious. It makes us conquerors, because His love is deep enough to hold us and hold everything that happens to us.

         Amen.

Valley Covenant Church
Eugene/Springfield, Oregon
Copyright © 2011” by Stephen S. Bilynskyj