CHILDREN OF A GREATER GOD
Dr. Erwin W. Lutzer

Part One: The Spirit Prays Within Us

Most of us don’t think of prayer as difficult work. For many, prayer is what is said at mealtimes, or a quick verbal request to God in the middle of a situation that we’d like to see changed.

But in prayer we are not involved alone; God is not just the destination to which our prayers are directed, He is also at the origin of our prayers. We don’t simply have to pray to receive God’s power, we even need God’s power to pray!

Let’s learn how to experience God’s quiet guidance in our prayer life. Here are some words from the Apostle Paul that should make us stop and think: “And in the same way the Spirit also helps our weaknesses; for we do not know how to pray as we should, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words; and He who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because He intercedes for the saints according to the will of God” (Romans 8:26,27).

In Romans 8, Paul says that “creation groans.” God’s creation was pronounced good because it represented harmony, beauty, and perfection. Sin caused the good creation to become the groaning creation. Creation, says Paul, is like a woman who gives birth to a child. The pain is temporary. The joy will eventually come.

Second, Paul says “We groan” (Romans 8:23). Psychologist Helmut Thielicke wrote that Americans don’t know how to suffer; they consider it as illegitimate... “fundamentally inadmissible, disturbing, embarrassing and not to be endured.” Yet groaning is a part of life. The cancer that reduces us to a skeleton or the accident that debilitates us — these are the means by which God takes us from this life into the next. And on the day of resurrection, we will receive our perfect bodies. Every groan should be a reminder of glory; every pain should be a reminder of paradise.

Then third, Paul surprises us by seeming to say that the Spirit also groans. “The Spirit intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.” Before I tell you what I think that phrase means, let us remind ourselves why we need the intervention of the Holy Spirit in our praying. Sometimes we are too weak to pray. At other times we lack patience. When we groan, we become impatient for coming glory; we are tired of waiting for our redemption.

Also, and this is the point Paul emphasizes, we lack wisdom; we do not know how to pray. “We do not know how to pray as we ought...” The intention of God is often confusing to us. We think that healing a friend would give God the most glory. We believe that supplying money for us is what any loving Father would do. But God’s ways are often unpredictable. We want His will to be done, but we cannot pry into His diary and read the fine print. So we need help in prayer.

Paul didn’t know how to pray regarding his thorn in the flesh. Christ also appears to have been baffled regarding God’s will. In John 12:27 he said, “Now is my soul troubled and what shall I pray? Father save me from this hour ... yet for this cause came I unto this hour.”

And of course we think of his prayer in Gethsemane, “Father, if it be Thy will let this cup pass from Me ... nevertheless, not as I will but as Thou wilt.”

So we must often pray, “if it be Thy will.” In the end there has to be a resignation; a willingness to let God make the final determination, and an acceptance of whatever comes to pass.

When Paul says that the Holy Spirit “helps” us, that means that the Spirit joins us in bearing the burdens our weaknesses impose upon us. God is on our side when we pray.

Some people think that the phrase, “groanings which cannot be uttered” refers to a groaning which is inexpressible in words; Paul in his heavenly vision heard “unspeakable words.” We have all had times when we had no words to express how we felt. So it could be a reference to “content-less groans.”

Or, possibly it could be groaning which never reaches the level of words; that is, groanings which are simply not expressed. Either way, we are speaking about a longing inside the human heart which is never translated into speech. These groanings are private and kept to ourselves.

A more important question is: Who groans? Do we groan or does the Spirit groan? I always believed it was the Spirit who groans because it says that the “Spirit intercedes for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.” But as I stopped to think about it, it is unlikely that the Spirit groans. Yes, Christ groaned in His spirit at the tomb of Lazarus, but that was in His humanness; He groaned as the God-man. But the Holy Spirit would not groan; He is, after all, God. He knows the beginning, He knows the end, and He knows everything in between. The Spirit knows how it will all end. He faints not, neither becomes weary.

I believe that we are the ones who groan. The Holy Spirit produces groans in our heart. Yes, it does say that the Spirit groans, but we must interpret this as we do Galatians 4:6, where Paul writes, “And because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of the Son into our hearts crying, ‘Abba Father!”’ Notice that the Spirit is said to exclaim, “Abba Father!” but that, obviously, is something we do. The Spirit causes us to cry ‘Abba Father;” only we could say those words. Just so, only we could groan. The Spirit causes us to.

Here is how I understand it: we are in trouble, filled with perplexity about the will of God in a particular situation. The Holy Spirit begins to tell us what to pray for; He knows what is best. We become conscious within of something that we cannot express in words. We have a desire that cannot be put into phrases; we don’t even really know what it is ourselves. It comes out as a groan.

Does this mean that we should not pray and just let the Spirit do the interceding? No, it is clear that Paul means that the Spirit prays with us; he helps us; he does not eliminate us from the intercession process. Right at this moment He is available to help us pray.

The result? When the Spirit produces groans in us which we do not understand, we can rejoice despite our limitations. We can be sure that God has heard us. The Lord who searches the hearts understands the content of the groans. This phrase should arrest our attention. God searches our hearts. The hidden desires, the secret sins that we keep from others; the petty jealousies, the anger, the covetousness and the hidden schemes of the mind — all these are known by God. “Everything is naked unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do” (Hebrews 4:13).

God the Father who searches the minds and hearts -- it is He Who picks up on our groans and He agrees with them! Obviously, these groans, which are inspired by the Holy Spirit, are in perfect agreement with the will of God. Martin Lloyd Jones writes, “The faintest whisper in the heart of man is known to God” and that is true even if the sigh is so faint you are unaware of it.

Prayer is the soul’s sincere desire
Uttered or unexpressed
The motion of a hidden fire
That trembles ‘neath the breast.

The Holy Spirit expresses to God those petitions that perfectly match His will. When we do not know what to pray for; or when we ask for those things that are out of His will, we can depend on the Holy Spirit to petition the Father on our behalf. We don’t have to know the beginning and the end of all things to pray effectively. We need to simply depend on the Spirit to help our weaknesses and make up for any deficiencies of our flesh. And, yes, God hears!

Our burden is made lighter. We might still be puzzled about God’s will, but now we know that He is at work despite our weaknesses.

Let’s not be presumptuous in praying. God’s ways are unpredictable. Sometimes I have thought I knew His will only to later discover that He did the opposite.

We can make our requests to God, but at the end of the day, the final decision should always be His. The Israelites complained about the food in the desert and insisted that God give them meat. We read, “He granted their request, but sent leanness to their souls” (KJV).

A mother in Canada insisted that God heal her sick infant; she demanded that He answer her prayer whether it was God’s best or not. She lived to see that boy tried for murder. We do not have enough facts to make a final evaluation of such situations, but it does remind us that we must leave the ultimate decision to God. Only He knows the future, only He knows best.

Second, the Holy Spirit enables us to be in full agreement with God. We should have the attitude of the three Hebrew children in the book of Daniel who, when confronted with the fiery furnace said, “We believe, O, king that our God is able to deliver us ... but if he doesn’t we will not bow down and worship the image...” Whether we get our requests or not, God should have all that we are and have. The Spirit within will help us line up with the will of God. Submission and worship is the goal of all prayer.

God is intensely focused on us and our needs. The Father hears the intercession of the Son in heaven and our Spirit-led groanings on earth.

When all things are against me
To drive me to despair
I know one gate is open
One ear will hear my prayer.

Our groanings will lead to glory. Remember, God even hears the “content-less” whisper within the human heart.

Part Two: God Works For Us

Now let’s look at one of the best loved verses in all of the Bible. If the Bible were a ring, the book of Romans just might be its crowning jewel and the eighth chapter the tip of the diamond. And shining at the tip would be verse 28, “And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.”

There are many things that we do not know. For example, Paul has just said that “We do not know how to pray as we ought...” And certainly we do not know the mysteries of God’s purposes. And yet, here is one of the most gracious promises in all the Bible.

Our plans are often foiled; our best intentions work against us. We simply do not have everything go our way; in fact, life is filled with reversals. For every mile we swim down the river, we must swim two upstream. The vacation we hoped to enjoy is marred by an accident. The marriage we hoped would be happy, ends in a divorce. We ourselves might be the victim of the anger and abuse of our parents. And, we may have done many things that now hang over our heads like a giant cloud that will not pass.

How shall we understand this promise in light of life’s senseless happenings? The child in the orphanage asks: How can this be for my good? The lonely invalid confined to a wheel chair asks, How can this be for my good? All around us are tears and regrets. How can “all things work together for good?”

Lets analyze this promise by commenting on each of its five phrases. First, I’m interested in the two words, “God causes.” God is actively involved in our lives. Though He is unseen, He is divinely leading and orchestrating all that comes to pass. Blessed is the person who sees God in everything.

The next phrase is “all things.” We look about us and everything in nature works together for good. When I was in the redwood forests of California, I noticed that a crooked tree will straighten itself out by growing buttresses on the side that needs correction. You wonder who told the tree to do that, who programmed the trees to grow straight to the sky regardless of the obstacles along the way?

If water didn’t expand just before it freezes, ice would not float; if ice didn’t float, the oceans would be filled with ice and the fish would die. The planets make their rounds with such precision that we set our clocks by them. Yes, God orchestrates nature so that “all things work together for good.”

But do literally “all things” in our lives work together for good? The unexpected check in the mail, the good health report, the obedient children — all of these work together for good.

What about tragedies? Job learned that even the death of his children and his own physical suffering did, in the end, work together for good.

Even the injustices inflicted against us can work together for good. Joseph was wounded by the cruelty of his brothers who sold him into Egypt. Yet in the end, this too worked together for good. He told his brothers later, “you meant it for evil but God meant it for good...”

But now it gets more tricky. What about my own sin, my mistakes and failures, my rebellion —can these also work together for good?

We must tread cautiously here. I must emphasize that sin is always detrimental; it is always harmful and not helpful. It always has lasting side-effects. But if we, like the prodigal, respond to it correctly; if we are willing to go back to our Father and let the sin break us; if we are willing to repent and experience God’s mercy, then yes, God causes even this to work together for good.

A child conceived out of wedlock; even broken marriage vows and failures; even these can work together for good. We receive letters from prisoners who tell us that God has brought some good out of their failures. We must draw a circle that encompasses all things, for the believer everything within that circle can work together for good.

Next phrase, “Work together.” God orchestrates events. He puts things together what we do not understand. A druggist takes a bit of this and a teaspoon of that and when he mixes it in the right proportions, it is good for our health. God also mixes the right combination of joys and pains so that these independent elements can come together in a recipe that will bring about His purposes.

We don’t see it, of course. We don’t see how a list of random events form some kind of hidden pattern that is precious to God. We are not expected to understand, we are simply required to believe. God is the one who uses events according to His purpose.

I’ve often thought of Mary who anointed the Lord with ointment. Recall that Christ said to her that wherever the Gospel would be preached, her story would be told. When she performed this generous act for her Savior, she had no idea that for 2000 years her story would stand as a touching reminder of loving service. Who knows but what is hidden from us, God is using the trial of our faith to honor Him in ways we know nothing about. All that we know is that “God causes all things to work together for good.”

Take heart. Although things are going bad, they just might be going very well! If you take a clock apart or at least if you take the back off of it, you will notice that there are some wheels going in the opposite direction from the hands. Those wheels that are going backward are actually doing this to advance the hands. Our problem is that we often see only the wheels that are turning the wrong way. God causes these to “work together...”

The next phrase is “for good.” What is the good toward which things work? Is it “the good life,” a house in the city and one at the beach with a new car every year? No, that is not the good to which things work. Incidentally, if our theology does not work for the Christians who were thrown to the lions in Rome, then it can’t be biblical. Health and prosperity cannot be the good to which all things work.

God’s good is explained here: “that we might be conformed to the image of His son that He might be the firstborn among many brethren.” God’s good is the development of character; the formation of our faith. It is patience under suffering, it is the commitment of one’s life entirely to God. Someone asked a sculptor “How do you make an elephant?” And he responded, “You take a block of marble and chip away everything that isn’t elephant.” God’s goal is to chip away everything that isn’t Christ. When we sing “O, to be like Thee,” we are expressing the very heart of God’s will for us.

The fifth phrase, “to those who love God.” This verse is for believers; all things do not work together for the good of unbelievers. Remember Christ’s words about Judas, “...it would have been good for that man if he had not been born” (Mark 14:21).

But even so, I believe that Judas’ life on earth worked together for God’s good. If we saw everything from the vantage point of eternity, we can say that everything — even the judgment of the wicked — works together for God’s good. In the end, everything will glorify God.

But if we want all things to work together for our good, we must believe in Christ. We are “the called according to His purpose.” Only God’s children have the right to interpret things with spiritual understanding. If so, even Christians in persecution can agree that all things work together for good. The mature Christian does not say, “This is bad for me,” without trying to understand God’s purpose in it all.

One summer after we as a family returned from a vacation in Canada, I said “God was so good to let us drive that far without an accident and without a bit of car trouble.” It dawned on me just after I said it that God would have been good even if we had had a tragedy along the way. Yes, God is always good. All things work together for His good. If we are believers, He causes all things to work together for our good too.

We can put it this way: For believers, our good and God’s good converge; they become one and the same. He is always working to conform us to the image of Christ. He works in us both to will and to do of His good pleasure.

All afternoon a little boy tried to put together his birthday gift from his father: a picture puzzle. Some of the pieces were bright, some dark; some seemed to go together, others seemed to fit nowhere. Finally, frustrated and exhausted and with nothing to show for his efforts, the boy gathered the pieces, put them in the box, and gave it to his dad. “I can’t do it,” he said simply.

To his amazement, his father assembled the entire puzzle in a few minutes. “You see,” he said, “I knew what the picture should look like because I was following the picture on the box and you were looking only at the puzzle.”

Just so, we are frustrated over events because the pieces do not seem to fit. But God sees the whole picture. The best we can do is to affirm that the bits and pieces of information from our corner of the world do not, of themselves, make sense. He does not let us see the picture; he just expects us to do the best we can with the pieces. But we are trusting that God will fit them in. He does work “...all things after the counsel of His will” (Ephesians 1:11).

Meditate on this verse often, emphasizing a different word each time you recite it. “And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.”

Part Three: God Plans For Us

If you are trying to be blessed of God and it doesn’t seem to be working, maybe you are trying too hard! Right now I want you to just relax and let God bless you. This time there is nothing for you to do but to receive. Just as the dry soil enjoys the rain and does not have to do anything except welcome it, so we are going to see what God has done for us, without our doing anything for it.

Let me warn you that we are going to be navigating some deep waters. We are going to probe as far as we can into God’s revealed purposes. We are going to simply enjoy trying to grasp the initiative He took for us. So fasten your seat belt and let us begin.

Our microscope will be trained on five words, five links in a golden chain that will take us from eternity past to eternity future. Let’s hear the verse and then we will try to understand it word by word.

“For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren; and whom He predestined, these He also called; and whom He called, these He also justified; and whom He justified, these He also glorified” (Romans 8:29,30).

Before we begin to study each of these five words, let me make a few introductory comments.

First, God is the subject of all five of these powerful verbs; we are the object. God does all the doing, we do all the receiving. To put it differently: we do not act, we are acted upon. He foreknew us, predestined us, called us, justified and glorified us. All the activity is on God’s side of the ledger.

Second, all of these verbs are in the past tense. Paul speaks of them as having been accomplished. That should not surprise us since “God calls those things which are not as though they are.” But from a practical standpoint, we should rest in the assurance that God’s plan will never be thwarted. In other words, because God’s work is “a done deal,” to use the vernacular, so our salvation is also “a done deal.” If you are trusting Christ, consider your final redemption completed.

Third, it is quite obvious that salvation is of God, not us. He has saved us that “we might be conformed to the image of His Son.” Christ did, after all, die to display the righteousness of God.

Fourth, God takes full responsibility to complete what He has begun. He who has begun the good work in us, “Will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus” (Philippians 1:6). Of course there are some people who think that God took on a bigger project than He could complete. After all, they say, we have a free will so we can stand in opposition to His plan and even force Him to leave His work in our hearts unfinished. Well, I believe that the God who overcomes our initial reluctance to believe in His Son, God who draws us to Himself will make sure that we will be His forever.

And now for a closer look at these five active verbs.

Those “Whom He foreknew...” The first idea that might come to your mind is that Paul simply means that God knew us ahead of time; He knew who we were and He knew that we would believe in Him. In other words, you might think that this is simply a statement regarding the omniscience of God.

But this word, “foreknow” has a deeper meaning. It really means “to foreordain.” Just listen to how the word is used elsewhere: “... this man, delivered up by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God, you nailed to a cross by the hands of godless men and put Him to death” (Acts 2:23, NASB). “God has not rejected His people whom He foreknew” (Romans 11:2, NASB). Peter says that we were chosen “...according to the foreknowledge of God the Father.” Then he uses the same word for Christ who “Was foreknown before the foundation of the world, but has appeared in these last times for the sake of you” (1 Peter 1:2,20, NASB).

We can tell by the contexts in which it is used that the word foreknow really means to foreordain, or to “forelove.”
In none of these instances can the word simply mean “to know ahead of time.” As I mentioned, Peter says we were foreknown, but Christ, he says, also has been “foreknown.” This can only mean that the word foreknow means “to set one’s heart on.” This is the way it is also used in the Old Testament, “You only have I known of all the families of the earth,” (Amos 3:2) God said regarding Israel.

To summarize: The word “foreknowledge” is never used in the Bible regarding events, but always is used of God’s knowledge of His own people. We are not saved because of what God saw in us; we are saved because of what He chose to do for us.

If you are a believer, in eternity past God set His heart on you. He chose you; He already loved you. You already had a relationship with Him back then.

Paul now writes that the people who were foreknown were also “predestined.” That word means to “mark out ahead of time.” Sometimes it was used of surveyors who came to a territory and marked it out for settlement.

Long before we arrived on the scene, God marked out our destiny. He put His circle of love around us; He arranged that we would be “conformed to the image of His Son.” It is staggering to realize that in ages past God already made meticulous plans for our arrival on planet earth.

And what is our future? It is to be “conformed to the image of His Son.” God’s purpose in all of this is not just to rescue us but to show us off as objects of His love and grace. He had one Son and now He wants others. Of course we will never be the Son of God as Christ was, but we are sons in a secondary sense. And we eventually “will be like Him for we shall see Him as He is” (1 John 3:2).

The next word is “called.” Whereas the first two words refer to what God did before the foundation of the world, this word “called” refers to God making His past decision actual in the lives of believers. Just as Lazarus was called by Christ, so we too were called even when we were dead in trespasses and sins.

Was there even the slightest chance that Lazarus might not respond to the command of Christ to “Come forth?” I think not. He was dead and therefore could not resist the divine initiative. Just so, when God calls us to salvation, the call is effective, it accomplishes its intended result.

Now of course we have examples in the Bible of those who have resisted the Holy Spirit. But no person who was foreknown and predestined in eternity past will ever resist God’s call indefinitely. God will save those whom He has chosen to save. This does not absolve us of individual responsibility; it just means that if God didn’t take the initiative to save us, left to ourselves we would never turn to Him. Thankfully, salvation is of the Lord.

The next step, of course, is justification. “Those whom He called, He justified.” Justification means more than forgiveness. It means that God has declared us to be as righteous as Christ. Without such a gracious act, it would be impossible for any one of us to get to heaven. We can only be admitted if we are as righteous as God Himself. Christ’s righteousness meets God’s requirement for us.

God made Christ to be sin for us “that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him.” We will never be nearer to God than we are at this moment; we will never be dearer to God than we already are. As the poem goes:

Nearer to God,
Nearer I cannot be
For in the Person of His son
I’m just as near as He!

Finally, the last word in the series is “glorified.” Notice again that it also is in the past tense, “them He also glorified.” This final step is completed. As far as God is concerned, you are already in heaven.

A little girl was asked how many pennies she had. “Ten,” she replied. But she found only five in her pocket. “No, but I do have ten,” she said, “for my father promised me five more when I get home.” So it is, the pennies are already ours. Heaven is as good as a reality.

Please don’t overlook the fact that God ends up with the same number of people with which He began. “Those whom He foreknew” are the same ones whom He “glorified.” None has fallen through the cracks. The good shepherd ends with the same number of sheep in the evening as were entrusted into His care in the morning. Yes, sheep can be stubborn; yes, they can take false paths; yes, they can rebel against the leadership of the shepherd; but in the end He finds them, disciplines them, and leads them all the way into the heavenly sheep fold.

A question arises: How can we know that we are among those who have these special privileges? How do we know that we are indeed among those whom God has chosen?

The only answer is to trust Christ as our Savior. When we do, we know that this is proof that we were included in God’s gracious act of salvation. Since no man can come except the Holy Spirit draw Him, we can be sure that our coming is the result of the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives. Our responsibility is not to worry about whether we were included, but to respond to Christ so that we give evidence that we are indeed one of God’s sheep.

When we are among the “called,” we can rejoice in the completeness of God’s salvation. We know that the purpose and plan of God is sure. He will carry us all the way home.

Part Four: God’s Love Defends Us

When my wife and I were in Russia, some friends gave us a beautiful carved doll. When you unscrewed the top, you discovered that within the doll was a second doll, within it, a third, then a fourth; nine dolls in all were in it, and the last had a piece of candy tucked inside.

So it is when we accept Christ as our personal Savior. We are invited to unwrap our blessings. And the more carefully we look, the more we find. Paul wrote, “He that spared not his own Son but delivered Him up for us all how shall He not also with Him freely give us all things?” (Romans 8:32). In this message we would like to begin to unwrap some of those gifts given so freely to us.

The Greek word means that God “handed over” His Son. This was a voluntary act on God’s part. And Christ willingly accepted the humiliation and death that awaited Him. He was led as a lamb to the slaughter, but He was a willing lamb.
Paul now argues from the greater to the lesser. If God has given us that which is most precious to Him (His Son), will He not also give us other blessings along with Him? If you buy a diamond, will you not also be given the box in which it comes?

What is meant by the “all things” which we receive? We could make quite a list: the gift of peace, the gift of access to God; the gift of hope and the gift of the Holy Spirit -- the list could go on and on.

But here Paul has two other blessings on his mind. First, Christ defends us; and second, the Father will not stop loving us. God’s justice and love are both on our side. “Who will bring a charge against God’s elect? God is the one who justifies; who is He who died, yes, rather who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who also intercedes for us.”

Paul paints a courtroom scene. The Judge is God. He is infinitely holy; His requirements are perfection; the gap between Him and our performance is eternal and unbridgeable. The moment He shines a spotlight on us, we become aware of our sinfulness. Even the little sins become big in His presence. And He knows everything about us.

If you have never felt that sense of personal guilt and condemnation, I have to doubt whether you are truly saved. We all know, in our honest moments, that we are nasty sinners.

So now we walk into the courtroom to give an account of ourselves to God. Our first thought is to justify ourselves, but our sins come to mind and we are devastated with the glaring fact that we have not lived up to what we know to be right. We have fallen short of our own standards, not to mention the much greater standard of God. We are forced to just keep our mouths closed.

The prosecution is also there. Yes, our conscience already sits in judgment of us, but so does Satan, who accuses us, affirming what we intuitively know to be true, namely, that we have no right to be called a child of God. This accuser is angry that we have been redeemed by God, angry that someday we will be heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ. His briefcase, figuratively speaking, is bulging with accusations. And most of them are true. Others, are slanderous. But the truth itself is enough to do us in.

Thankfully, our defender, Christ steps into the room. He reminds the court that He did not die in vain. His death satisfied God’s requirements. “He was made sin for us that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him.” He argues our case, reminding the tribunal that the defendant owes God no righteousness for the debt has been paid.

Jesus thy blood and righteousness
My beauty art
My heavenly dress

Though we are charged with not having kept the law, the ledger is in fact balanced. The works of Christ are placed on our side of the scale and God the Father agrees that we are acquitted. And Christ’s intercession continues day by day. He is our righteousness before the Father continually. We are acquitted, walking out of the courtroom without a single charge against us.

God’s justice has been satisfied. We have been legally acquitted. The Lawgiver of the universe has declared us to be without sin; no, even better, we are declared to be as righteous as He Himself is!

Little wonder Paul asks: If God be for us, who can be against us? God is for us, because Christ died for us; God is for us because Christ yet intercedes for us.

And now that these legal matters are taken care of, God can love us just as He loves his Son. In fact, because we are seated with His Son in heaven, we cannot be thrown out because God’s Son cannot be thrown out.

Maybe I’m speaking to someone who just might believe that God is not “for you.” You have experienced loneliness and pain. A young woman who has battled cancer for several years and who has been very sick for the past six months, finds no relief from her pain. A Christian man said of her, “It is as if God has forgotten her!”

Well, has He?

This leads to another blessing we must unwrap: it is the certainty that we can never be separated from God’s love. God’s grace is for us, but so is His power.

Paul now lists three different categories of trials that will never be able to sever us from Christ. See if you can find your own personal trial in this catalogue.

Notice that the cruel events of life will not separate us from Christ: tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, and the sword (i.e. death). Cancer can’t do it; injustice can’t do it; poverty can’t do it. The tears wept as you go to sleep each night can’t do it.

Paul adds, “Just as it is written ‘For Thy sake we are being put to death all day long; we were considered as sheep to be slaughtered.’” Trials should actually be expected. We are, after all, called to follow in the footsteps of our Master who went like a lamb to be slaughtered. So too we are marked for the persecutions and trials of life. It is not a new thing, says Paul, for the godly to be exposed to ungodly treatment.

Yet, Paul has the courage to tell us, “But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us.” We don’t just barely make it; we win with flying colors.

Of course Paul knows that there are some people who are going to be unconvinced. They might agree that the tragedies of this life cannot separate us from the love of Christ, but they will think of some greater things; there are powers of cosmic proportions that might separate us from Christ’s love. There is, after all, death, angels and demons. There is also the “freedom of the will” as the saying goes.

To lay all that to rest, Paul continues, “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, nor any other created thing shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Death can’t do it. Angels can’t do it; Satan can’t do it; in fact anything created by God cannot separate us from His love. Paul wants us to exclude all possibilities. I know that saying it this way could be misunderstood, but I shall say it anyway. If you are a Christian, there is nothing you can do to cause God to stop loving you! Yes, He is grieved because of our sin, but His love endures. And we will know that love for all of eternity.

What conclusions can we draw from this sweeping statement? First, nothing can separate us from God’s love because of the purpose of God. He intends to hold on to all those who are His. When Paul asks, “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?” he is talking about the personalities of this world and he makes no exceptions. Satan can’t; we can’t and God won’t.

God is strong enough to take on “all comers.” Whether it is us or Satan; whether it is natural events or spiritual powers, God is committed to His people. He keeps them in His hands even though some would want to pry open His fingers. But we are in Christ and Christ is in God.

Perhaps you ask whether personal assurance of these things is possible. Paul wrote, “I am persuaded...” He was convinced and so can we be; we can have personal assurance that we are God’s forever. We also can be “persuaded” of these things.

An aged saint on being asked to describe salvation, aptly replied, “Something for nothing.” But another saint who had weathered the storms for many a long year and who was approaching death exclaimed, “It’s even better than that: it’s everything for nothing.”

If you are confused by the many religions in the world, let me simplify matters by saying that there are really only two: on the one hand are all those religions that believe that we are saved by doing something; on the other hand is the one religion that believes we are saved by what someone else has already done.

Only those who despair in trying to please God and depend on Christ to please God for them; only those who trust Christ to be their Savior can unwrap the gifts we have spoken about. We who have done so can do no better than to love the One who has done so much for us. But always remember the sequence, “We love Him because He first loved us.”

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