WEBVTT 00:00:00.640 --> 00:00:05.759 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? 00:00:08.640 --> 00:00:12.160 What a powerful question. 00:00:14.000 --> 00:00:15.919 Romans 8. 00:00:16.960 --> 00:00:31.039 Our scripture reading today is honing in on what is really the crescendo of Paul's argument that he's been making the entire time in Romans. 00:00:31.120 --> 00:00:37.039 All the preceding chapters are leading up to this claim. 00:00:38.159 --> 00:00:45.200 The rhetorical burden of everything that has come before this is leading to this. 00:00:46.640 --> 00:00:50.640 And this powerful claim that Paul makes. 00:00:56.159 --> 00:00:59.920 A claim that we should believe regularly. 00:01:01.119 --> 00:01:11.760 But it is also a claim that we need to know deeply, experientially, as Paul no doubt did. 00:01:13.439 --> 00:01:21.439 It is the claim, of course, that nothing can separate us from the love of God. 00:01:22.560 --> 00:01:33.200 Which Paul makes without qualification, or actually with enormous qualifications, such that it doesn't qualify anything. 00:01:35.280 --> 00:01:39.840 Leading up to this moment in Romans, see, Paul has been making an argument. 00:01:40.000 --> 00:01:45.200 Paul is riding to a church in Rome, and this church is made up of some. 00:01:45.760 --> 00:02:11.280 We could, this is a little bit um inappropriate to call it this, but Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians, those categories weren't really around at this time, but but this community is struggling a bit with each other, how to relate to each other as this body of new believers, and and in this community, questions were coming to the surface. 00:02:11.680 --> 00:02:19.520 Fundamentally, the question of is God faithful to God's covenants? 00:02:20.319 --> 00:02:22.479 Is God faithful to God's promises? 00:02:22.639 --> 00:02:24.719 Does God keep God's word? 00:02:26.560 --> 00:02:49.599 Because if you are in this time, Paul being a Jewish man, looking at his Jewish sisters and brothers, his kinsmen of the flesh, many of whom are not claiming Christ as Messiah, and many of Israel who are not experiencing the power of the Spirit that's in this fellowship of believers? 00:02:50.719 --> 00:02:55.280 One would ask, has God abandoned God's people? 00:02:56.319 --> 00:03:04.080 Did God get rid of this thing called Israel and start this new thing called the church? 00:03:05.039 --> 00:03:08.879 Is a question that keeps coming up in Romans, right? 00:03:09.439 --> 00:03:13.680 Does their faithlessness nullify the faithfulness of God? 00:03:14.800 --> 00:03:19.039 And this is a good question to answer and to ask. 00:03:19.360 --> 00:03:21.759 Does God keep God's covenant? 00:03:22.080 --> 00:03:23.840 Is God faithful? 00:03:25.120 --> 00:03:35.360 Because if we encounter a God who is capable of not keeping his promises, then we should be terrified. 00:03:36.319 --> 00:03:38.879 Because that God will leave you too. 00:03:41.199 --> 00:03:44.719 But Paul is resolved in his argument. 00:03:46.400 --> 00:03:57.759 His argument is, of course, that the faithfulness, the covenant faithfulness of God has been made manifest in the faithfulness of Jesus. 00:03:58.159 --> 00:04:10.319 Paul has this claim where he says that God's covenant faithfulness, the righteousness of God, has been manifest apart from the law and the prophets, although they bear witness to it. 00:04:10.800 --> 00:04:13.840 It's taken place in a surprising way. 00:04:14.879 --> 00:04:21.839 Now the language of covenant is the language of binding, loyalty, faithfulness. 00:04:22.480 --> 00:04:34.319 When God makes a covenant with Abraham, God, by God's word, is binding God's self to Abraham and his posterity, his offspring, his future. 00:04:34.560 --> 00:04:43.360 When God makes a covenant with Moses, God is binding God's self to Moses and by extension the people of Israel. 00:04:43.680 --> 00:04:49.439 The language of covenant is the language of loyalty, binding, commitment, faithfulness. 00:04:49.600 --> 00:04:51.680 This is what covenant means. 00:04:53.040 --> 00:05:02.240 And for Paul, Jesus, Christ is the manifestation of God's covenant faithfulness. 00:05:02.639 --> 00:05:04.959 Who is Christ for Paul? 00:05:05.600 --> 00:05:07.040 This is the good news. 00:05:07.199 --> 00:05:09.360 This is the gospel for Paul. 00:05:09.519 --> 00:05:14.720 This is what everything is leading up to in this passage that we just read. 00:05:15.040 --> 00:05:18.079 Who is Christ, according to Paul? 00:05:18.639 --> 00:05:27.040 One way to say it is Christ is the Father's refusal to let go of you. 00:05:29.759 --> 00:05:37.120 Christ is the manifestation of God's refusal to let go of you. 00:05:39.040 --> 00:05:42.319 Christ is the mediator. 00:05:42.639 --> 00:05:50.000 Christ is the grip, the loving, tenacious grip of the Father on our lives. 00:05:50.720 --> 00:05:59.600 Such that the possibility that anything could sever us from this grip is itself inconceivable. 00:05:59.839 --> 00:06:04.079 It would be making Christ a walking contradiction. 00:06:04.560 --> 00:06:09.680 It's like, uh, can you make glue not sticky or something like that? 00:06:09.839 --> 00:06:13.680 Can anything separate us from the love of Christ? 00:06:14.079 --> 00:06:21.680 The one who is the embodiment of faithfulness, even in the midst of our faithlessness. 00:06:22.720 --> 00:06:38.240 It is, in the words of theologian Chris Green, Christ here is the manifestation of God, who God is, namely, that God would rather be a God with us than God without us. 00:06:39.199 --> 00:06:46.959 Christ is the manifestation that God would rather be God with us than God without us. 00:06:48.240 --> 00:06:52.319 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? 00:06:52.959 --> 00:07:08.000 I love Paul's language here because it seems to go and move from prose to like an elevated form of poetry and praise, like worship. 00:07:08.879 --> 00:07:15.759 Paul begins this section, right, Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? 00:07:16.720 --> 00:07:26.480 And then he goes on, shout tribulation or distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, danger, sword. 00:07:27.600 --> 00:07:27.920 No. 00:07:29.920 --> 00:07:44.240 By the way, he just lists like all the conditions of wrath and death as it's understood by the covenant and Deuteronomy. 00:07:44.879 --> 00:07:47.519 This is the worst of the worst that Paul is naming. 00:07:47.920 --> 00:07:50.959 He's pulling right from the curses of Deuteronomy. 00:07:51.439 --> 00:07:53.360 That's as low as you can get. 00:07:55.759 --> 00:07:56.079 No. 00:07:57.519 --> 00:08:00.800 None of this can separate us from the love of Christ. 00:08:01.120 --> 00:08:07.040 No, he says, in all these things, Paul says we're more than conquerors. 00:08:08.000 --> 00:08:11.040 More than conquerors through him who loved us. 00:08:11.360 --> 00:08:22.560 For I am sure, this is where Paul's like confidence, his like certainty in faith seems to be like brimming over the pages here. 00:08:22.800 --> 00:08:24.240 Paul is very serious. 00:08:24.319 --> 00:08:25.120 He's very sure. 00:08:25.199 --> 00:08:26.319 He's very confident. 00:08:26.480 --> 00:08:44.879 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. 00:08:45.039 --> 00:08:48.080 It doesn't get any clearer than that. 00:08:51.039 --> 00:08:58.320 Nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus. 00:08:59.279 --> 00:09:06.639 This is the image that we get from the book of Nehemiah, the scripture that was just read. 00:09:07.519 --> 00:09:15.360 Nehemiah is cataloging all of ancient Israel's grievances and sins. 00:09:16.559 --> 00:09:23.679 Nehemiah says of our fathers, his forefathers, our forefathers. 00:09:23.919 --> 00:09:26.399 He said they acted presumptuously. 00:09:26.559 --> 00:09:28.480 He's describing Israel. 00:09:29.120 --> 00:09:31.360 They acted presumptuously. 00:09:31.600 --> 00:09:33.759 They were a stiff-necked people. 00:09:34.240 --> 00:09:37.840 Nehemiah says they didn't obey your commandments. 00:09:38.159 --> 00:09:46.240 He even says they refused to obey and were not mindful of the wonders that you performed among them. 00:09:46.480 --> 00:09:47.919 And they stiffened their neck. 00:09:48.000 --> 00:09:53.120 And they even appointed a leader to return to their slavery in Egypt. 00:09:53.360 --> 00:10:00.879 Like they're they're groveling and groping to get back to the pit that God just redeemed them out of. 00:10:01.200 --> 00:10:05.840 They're wanting to go back to sin, back to slavery. 00:10:06.240 --> 00:10:12.000 Nehemiah says, stiff-necked, crawling back, wanting to return to slavery in Egypt. 00:10:12.080 --> 00:10:23.360 And Nehemiah says, But you are God ready to forgive, gracious, merciful, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love, and did not forsake them. 00:10:27.200 --> 00:10:27.840 Wow. 00:10:29.840 --> 00:10:30.720 He goes on. 00:10:31.039 --> 00:10:46.559 Even after they're brought out of Egypt, Nehemiah says, and they even they even made this golden calf and they they held it up for all the people of Israel, and they said, This is your God who brought you out of Egypt, Israel. 00:10:47.440 --> 00:10:50.159 Full-fledged idolatry. 00:10:51.039 --> 00:10:54.399 And they committed blasphemies, Nehemiah says. 00:10:54.639 --> 00:11:00.639 But you, in your great mercy, did not forsake them. 00:11:05.360 --> 00:11:13.279 You led them, Nehemiah says, with a pillar of cloud and a pillar of fire by the way that they should go. 00:11:13.519 --> 00:11:18.159 And he says that you gave them your good spirit to instruct them. 00:11:19.120 --> 00:11:32.960 And even in the midst of all this unfaithfulness, all this bickering and grumbling and complaining and stiff neck, in the midst of all this, Nehemiah says, You didn't withhold your manna. 00:11:34.399 --> 00:11:37.759 And you gave them water for thirst. 00:11:40.080 --> 00:11:41.919 And they lacked nothing. 00:11:42.240 --> 00:11:47.840 Forty years long, Nehemiah says, you sustain them. 00:11:49.039 --> 00:11:50.320 Sustain them when? 00:11:51.200 --> 00:11:53.120 In disobedience. 00:11:53.840 --> 00:11:57.279 Sustain them in their stiff neckness. 00:12:00.399 --> 00:12:13.360 That this is the image that precisely, this image of covenant and binding and loyalty and not forsaking that Paul sees manifest in Christ. 00:12:14.000 --> 00:12:35.360 That though, even in the midst of our sin, even in the midst of our faithlessness, even in the midst of darkness, famine, sword, nakedness, pestilence, nothing, Paul says, can separate us from the love of Christ. 00:12:36.480 --> 00:12:39.679 I don't know everything that you're going through. 00:12:39.840 --> 00:12:46.320 I don't know what season of life you're in, what season of your spiritual life that you're in. 00:12:47.039 --> 00:12:59.679 I don't know if you're in a season where you're giving yourself and your heart to things, to sin, to shame, to guilt, to addiction, to pain. 00:13:00.240 --> 00:13:05.679 I don't know what is going on fully in your life, but I do know this. 00:13:06.320 --> 00:13:14.399 According to Paul, yeah, nothing can separate you from the love of God. 00:13:16.159 --> 00:13:26.399 Christ is the Father's tenacious, powerful refusal to let go of us. 00:13:27.600 --> 00:13:34.960 Christ is the embodiment of God's loving grip on our life. 00:13:35.279 --> 00:13:38.480 Just a few weeks ago, I saw a bumper sticker. 00:13:38.799 --> 00:13:39.759 I love it. 00:13:40.080 --> 00:13:45.600 It said, God loves you, and there's nothing you can do about it. 00:13:47.440 --> 00:13:48.559 I love that. 00:13:48.720 --> 00:13:51.600 It's like you've been stripped of all control. 00:13:53.039 --> 00:13:58.320 I'm sorry to tell you, you're not in control whether you're loved by God. 00:14:00.399 --> 00:14:02.480 You have no say in the matter. 00:14:02.799 --> 00:14:03.759 Sorry. 00:14:05.120 --> 00:14:09.360 Nothing is more powerful than the love of God. 00:14:10.080 --> 00:14:32.240 This is why Paul is totally convinced that anything, angels, rulers, present, past, height, depth, anything in creation, nothing can separate us from this God who is totally resolved to be God with us. 00:14:34.240 --> 00:14:36.960 This is good news, friends. 00:14:37.840 --> 00:14:39.519 This is good news. 00:14:41.679 --> 00:15:02.000 This is news that I feel very comfortable saying, whatever you're in right now, whatever is going on, I can just in the authority of the gospel, just tell you, yeah, nothing can separate you from the love of Jesus. 00:15:02.240 --> 00:15:04.879 Nothing can separate you from the love of God. 00:15:06.159 --> 00:15:08.720 Does this mean we won't be in the wilderness? 00:15:09.039 --> 00:15:09.360 No. 00:15:10.080 --> 00:15:14.399 Does this mean that we won't be ourselves stiff-necked? 00:15:14.639 --> 00:15:19.919 I love how sometimes we can read ancient Israel and kind of look down our nose. 00:15:20.000 --> 00:15:26.080 You know, what a bunch of disobedient, grumbling, complaining people, as though we're any different. 00:15:29.919 --> 00:15:40.320 This is the only hope we have is that God is faithful, even though we have been found and proven to be faithless. 00:15:42.240 --> 00:15:49.440 That Christ is the embodiment of God's total resolve to be with us. 00:15:51.440 --> 00:15:54.320 Total resolve to be with us. 00:15:54.559 --> 00:15:55.120 Amen.