Romans 8:31-39; If God Is for Us

Martin Wagner May 17, 2026 Faith Presbyterian Church Birmingham, AL Bulletin

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Transcript

Reading Romans 8:31-39

SPEAKER_00 0:24

This morning we've uh come to a passage in our study uh of Romans that one commentator says is the Mount Everest of the Bible. This is the high point in all of Scripture. Uh the great preacher Charles Spurgeon says that every time that he would encounter this particular passage, he would feel like he was a small child wading out into a deep ocean. I've sensed that, I've felt that this week. Uh this is an overwhelming passage. We could spend months just on these nine verses. And so when Jason asked me to preach this week and I saw the text that was uh assigned, it felt a little bit like uh a 16-year-old uh getting the keys to a brand new shiny sports car and his parents just saying, just don't wreck the car. You know, this is the Mount Everest of the Bible, just don't mess it up. Um, and so you can imagine I've uh been in my head a little bit uh this week. Um but why is this passage compared to Mount Everest? What is it about this passage? What I've noticed this week is that Paul doesn't cover anything new. There's no new theological doctrine that he covers that he hasn't already mentioned in Romans. But what this passage is, is that there is not another place in all of the scripture that speaks more directly and profoundly to the fears and anxieties that we all carry. In these verses, Paul is making some of the most audacious statements that any human being has ever written. And he is daring anyone, anyone in earth, anyone in heaven, anyone in hell, to try to refute what he is saying in this passage. So, yes, this is Mount Everest, but remember, Paul didn't write Romans so that scholars could sit in an ivory tower and could uh admire it from afar. Paul wrote Romans to people who were suffering. Paul wrote Romans to peoples whose conscience would not quit, who felt guilty, who were suffering. He wrote Romans for people just like you and me. Tim Keller would often use an illustration that is quickly becoming antiquated. He would talk about our Christian experience in terms of a vending machine. You know, a vending machine where you would put quarters in, and inevitably the coins would get stuck, and you would have to bang the side of the vending machine in order for the coins to drop. A lot of us have had the theology coins of Romans 8 have entered into our brain. We know what this passage says, but it hasn't dropped into our hearts. There's a disconnect between what we say we believe, but between what we know and the lived experience of our theology. And so my prayer today is that this passage would function a bit like a hand banging the side of our heads, and that the coins of God's grace would drop into our hearts. So let's read the passage. Uh, Romans 8, 31 to 39. Hear God's word to us today. 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 we also not 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, who shall separate us from the love of God, 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 of creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen. Let's pray. Father, we have just read words that uh we sense are almost too good to be true. And that's actually where we find ourselves today. We know that this is your word, but we can doubt that they are true for us. And so we ask that you would do what only you can do by your spirit, that you would take what we know in our heads and that you would drop the coins into our hearts. And Father, as we look at this passage, I am keenly aware that I am not equal to the glory of this passage. No mere pastor is. And so I ask that you would speak in spite of weakness, that you would speak beyond anything that I am capable of saying in my own flesh. And so let the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, our Lord, our rock, and our redeemer. And we pray this for the sake of the one who did not spare his son, but freely gave him for us. Hear us we pray. Amen. So here's the assumption that I am going to work from this morning, that you don't doubt that Romans 8 is true. You're not sitting there this morning debating Paul's theology. But what you doubt is whether what Paul says in this passage actually applies to you. Because here's what I found in life: that there is something about the human condition is that deep down we all feel as though we are the exception to the rule. That for everyone else in this room, that this applies to them, but there's somewhere in our particular history or failures or suffering that you and I have wandered into a place where the grace of God doesn't actually reach. And Paul knows that. Paul is keenly aware that that's the human condition, and he is going to push back against that in these nine verses. In this passage, Paul goes after three fears, three questions that I would contend are at the core of all of the anxieties that we have in life. And so I want to structure our time this morning by looking at how Paul answers what he says to these three fundamental fears we have in life. And the first fear is this: Does God actually like me? Or is God merely just putting up with me? We see that in verses 31 and 32. And the second fear is this: have I sinned too much? Is there a point at which the grace of God is going to run out? And then the last fear is this: will my suffering have the last word? Is what I'm going through right now, does that mean that God has left me? And so I want to be careful with the first question. Is God just putting up with me? Because that's a fear that actually can be kind of hard to say out loud in church because we know the answer. We've been taught it since we were kids. God loves you, God is for you. We're going to sing that as we close the service this morning. We believe it, but again, we believe it in our heads, but our lives would show that we don't really believe it. There's a difference between believing that God loves people in general and that God actually likes you. Well, does God love me? Sure, he has to. That's his job. He's God. But does God actually delight in me? Well, that's a different question. A lot of us live with this quiet suspicion that God's posture towards us is something closer to mild disappointment than genuine delight. We can imagine that God sort of sighing and rolling his eyes every time our name comes up on the caller ID. You know the feeling. Someone calls you and you sigh and you're like, I don't know that I have it in me to give to this person what it is that they're going to need in this call. We think God's attitude towards us is that he's just mildly disappointed, that he's somewhat disinterested in what is going on in life, and that our salvation, we we somehow got through on a technicality, that we are the charity case of God's grace to humanity. That God, if he were honest, would really rather not have us as a part of his family, but he's a nice fella, and he's just going to do us a favor in this situation. And we know what that feels like in our own relationships. We know what it feels like when you are not sure someone actually wants you around, when you get this sense that you're just being tolerated and not really appreciated. What happens when you feel that way? You stop asking the other person for things, you stop bringing them your problems. You manage life on your own because you are not sure that you want to confirm what you already suspect. What you know is that their patience with you is limited and that you are quickly running out of patience. That's exactly how a lot of us think God relates to us. We are not really sure that he likes us, and so we're not really sure that we can bring our actual lives to him. We manage on our own because we do not want to impose. And so Paul speaks to this fear in verse 31. He says, If God is for us, who can be against us? Paul doesn't have his head in the sand. He's not ignoring the fact that you and I have real things that are against us, the world, the flesh, and the devil. But the point that he's making in verse 31, he's saying, Take all of your enemies, take everything in this world that could possibly be against you, and put that on one side of the scale. And then on the other side of the scale, put the love of God, put a God that is for you. And what he is saying is that if God is for us, these lesser things have no shot. There is no comparison, there is no contest. Most of us know that. We we would say that that is absolutely true, but most of us live with a more personal version of this question. Our question is not really God, can you defeat our enemies? Can you defeat? Can you show up in what I'm facing right now? As God, do you want to show up in what I'm doing? What's going on in my life right now? We ask God, are you tired of me? Are you, have you seen the same pattern in my life so much that you're beginning to have second thoughts? You're beginning to have buyer's remorse when it comes to me. Is there a version of me that has finally exhausted the patience of God? And so Paul knows that's the actual question we're asking until he goes one step further. And in verse 32, he gives one of the most persuasive arguments that we have in all of Scripture. He says, If he who did not spare his own son, but gave him up for us all, how will he also not gracious with him graciously give us all things? The Father did not spare the son. That word did not spare, that's deliberately bringing up Genesis 22. You remember that story? That's when Abraham takes his son Isaac on the mountain. He's gonna sacrifice his son. But at the last moment, God stays his hand. God provides a substitute for Abraham's only son. God spared Abraham's only son, but God did not spare his only son. God did not stay his own hand. The cross is God holding absolutely nothing back from you. The gift of the Son of God is the most costly act in the history of the universe, given freely, given without reservation for you. And Paul's argument is this: if God gave the most costly thing in the universe, if he gave his only son, do you really think that he's gonna be stingy on a Tuesday with you? The cross is the guarantee of God's continuing generosity and faithfulness to you. The logic is of the greater to the lesser. If he did the hardest thing, then there is an easier thing that will follow. So I want to ask you, where are you tempted to think that God is not going to come through for you? What is it in your life right now that makes you think that you are the exception to the rule? Whatever that might be, whatever that situation is that you think that you're the exception to the rule, compare that, set that next to the cross of Jesus. Put that on the scale next to the gift of the Son of God for you. And then ask yourself, is there anything that God would possibly withhold from me that I need if he has given me his son? Is there any lesser gift that he would refuse if he has given the greatest one already? And here's what I want us to hear that our circumstances, our circumstances in life are not the primary evidence of God's favor towards you, God's posture towards you. The cross is the definitive evidence of God's posture towards you. When you were lying awake at night and you were wondering, is God really for me? Or whether what you are just being tolerated right now, what you were doing, what you were doing as you were in the bed wondering if God loves you, what you were doing is you were looking for a verdict in the wrong quartering. Do not read his posture towards you in light of your circumstances, read it via the cross. Because at the cross there is no ambiguity, there's no reluctance, there is no eye rolling, there is no hedging. There is a father who looked down on you, who sees all of your sins and sees all of your failures, and he did not spare his own son. That is not the action of a God who is merely putting up with you, but one who delights in you and who loves you. The second fear that Paul addresses in verse 33 and 34 is have I sinned too much? Is there a point at which this grace is going to run out? That is not a fear about our feelings, it's actually a fear about our record. We know that even though we try to suppress the truth, that there exists a gap in our lives between who we present ourselves to be and who we actually are. And you and I live with this persistent fear that one day that's going to be exposed. That one day everything we've tried so hard to keep hidden is going to be laid out in front of everyone, and we're going to be seen for who we really are. But most of us don't have to wait for a day of exposure to come because we have been living under prosecution for years in the courtroom inside our head. And court never adjourns there. Our inner attorney is a relentless prosecutor. He does not take weekends off. He is not fooled by the fact that you showed up at church this morning. My inner prosecutor is not fooled by the fact that I got up to preach a sermon today. My inner prosecutor knows what my week looked like. Your prosecutor knows what you are capable of. He knows your file. And unlike the people sitting around you, he is not impressed. But as bad as our condemnation of ourself is, there's something that's even worse. Is that God knows more of your sin than even you do. God sees a truer picture of you. God sees a more complete picture of your sins than even your own conscience sees. God knows the twisted desires of your heart. God knows the sins that you would have committed had you been given the chance. God knows those sins that you tried to commit, but you were prevented from doing so. There is not a single item in your file that God does not know in full. God is not operating with partial information when it comes to you. And this is an absolutely terrifying fact for anyone who was trying to make it on their own record. This is terrifying, frightening for anyone who is outside of Christ. But this is actually, for those who are in Christ, for those who are trusting in Jesus, this is actually the best news possible. Because what it means is that the sovereign, omniscient God of the entire universe, He knows all your stuff. He knows all every item in your file, every entry. God has got the full unredacted file on you. And he justified you anyway. God knows everything about you. And through faith in Christ, he has declared you innocent. That is what verse 33 is saying. Who shall bring any charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies. The only one withstanding to bring the final charge is the one who has already declared the verdict. The Supreme Judge has seen the full file, and he has declared you righteous. And so you are not out on parole. You've not been released for good behavior until you mess up again. You have been acquitted. The case on you is closed. But knowing the verdict and feeling that verdict can be two completely different things. You can be acquitted, and you can still be doing battle with your inner prosecutor in the middle of the night. The verdict secures your legal standing, but it doesn't silence your accuser. And so Paul reminds us of something that helps us in the present tense. He gives us something in this passage that helps us today, not just what happened in the past. He tells us that Christ is interceding for us right now. Look at verse 34. Christ died for your sins, was raised to new life, ascended to heaven, and he is interceding for you right now. What difference does that make? One author describes Christ's intercession as his pressing the reset button on your justification. Not because the verdict of your justification was incomplete, but because you and I, sinners, need that to be refreshed, to be applied to us every day. I can know that I've been justified, but I still sin every day. I still add to my record of wrongs each and every day. And the intercession of Christ is doing something about that, not by reopening the case, but Christ standing between you and anything that would ever be, that would ever come against you, every new accusation as it comes against you. We tend to think of intercession as begging. Christ is in the throne room of heaven and he is pacing back and forth, nervously hoping that God the Father will once again show mercy. That the decision is still in the balance, and Jesus is doing his best, hoping to tip the scales in our favor. But that is not the intercession of Romans 8. Jesus is not asking for leniency. Jesus is not pleading, oh, they'll do better next time. Jesus is pointing to his own wounds, and he is making a legal argument for us. But the law demanded full payment, and I have paid for every sin in that file. He must go free. Jesus is not arguing from sentiment, he's not interceding for us on the basis of good feelings, he is arguing and interceding from justice. And justice says, for those who are in Christ, you are free. The case has been closed and it will not be reopened. Let me give you a picture of what that feels like. Imagine that you're at a at a baseball game, and your tickets are in the cheap seats, you're in the nosebleed section, and you spot two seats on the front row, and so you decide you're gonna go from the outhouse down to the penthouse. And so you go down to the front row, you slide down the aisle, and you take a seat, and you try to look like you belong there. But what is your experience like for the rest of that game? At least for me, it's not a great experience. I'm sitting there the entire time wondering. When the real owners are going to show up. I'm looking over my shoulder. Every time someone walks down the aisle, I tense up. I'm just waiting to be found out. I'm waiting for that tap on the shoulder that says, Excuse me, but you're in my seat. You need to go back to where you belong. I'm anxious and I'm fragile and I feel like a fraud. I have the best seat in the house, but I can't enjoy a minute of it. That's what it feels like to think that you are justified on a technicality. You're in the good seats, but there's just a part of you that's waiting. This can't last. Part of you is just waiting to be removed. And so instead of resting, our entire life is spent looking over our shoulder. Our entire life is spent trying to perform, trying to manage, just waiting until the entire thing unravels. But here's what Paul is saying. You and I are not in those seats on a technicality. You don't have those seats because no one has noticed yet that you are a fraud. You are there because you have a ticket to be there. Not a forged ticket. Not a ticket that you sneaked by security with. You have a ticket that has been purchased by the highest price imaginable. A ticket that has been given to you by the only one in the universe with the authority to issue it. And you have a ticket with your name on it written in blood. And so when your accuser comes down the aisle, when your accuser looks at you, you don't have to sink down in your seat. You don't have to argue that I really do belong here. If you just knew me. All you have to do is to reach in your pocket and show them the ticket. This is your seat. Because the judge has ruled, and the son has paid, and court is adjourned. Who shall bring any charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies. Before I move to the third fear, I want to pause for a moment because what Paul has given to us in this first two sections is extraordinary. And I want to take it with me. I don't want just to remember it this morning, but every morning. And so this week I challenge myself and I want to offer to you to memorize this passage, not to get some sort of gold star. But as a means, these verses are in a some sense of gospel flashcards for our soul. And you and I, I'm going to need them. So when I'm tempted to believe that God doesn't really like me, that God's going to abandon me, that I am a charity case of God's grace. There is a flashcard for that. Romans 8:32, he who did not spare his own son, but he freely gave him up. That is not the action of a God who was just putting up with me. When the inner prosecutor starts reading your file in the middle of the night, when that voice will not go quiet, when the guilt will not lift, there is a flashcard for that. 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, and more that who was raised and who is seated at the right hand of God, who indeed is making intercession for me right now. And when the suffering says that God has forgotten you, when suffering says that the pit is too deep for any love of God to reach, there is a flashcard for that as well. And that is where Paul takes us next to the third fear. And this third fear is that one that suffering in our life produces. Will God, will my suffering have the last word? Does what I'm going through right now mean that God has left me? Is my suffering an evidence that the love of God that Paul has been describing doesn't actually reach this far to places this dark? Because there's a part of us that thinks that there are certain kinds of suffering that are incompatible with being loved by God. That if God really loved me, that this thing would not be happening to me, not keep on happening to me. The addiction that just won't leave, the cancer diagnosis that keeps coming back, the pain that won't subside, that these things, these circumstances, these sufferings are evidence that the love of God has limits. And Paul answers that fear with a question Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? And then he makes a list: tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, danger, and sword. I want you to understand that this is not a theoretical list. Paul's not sitting in his comfortable chair at home, making up just hypothetical hardships that the people of God might experience. Paul has experienced every one of these. This is autobiographical. Paul has been beaten, imprisoned, shipwrecked, left for dead. He's gone without food. He's been in danger from his own countrymen. Paul is speaking from experience. He's speaking firsthand and from inside the suffering that he experiences, he says, in all these things, in all these things, we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. Notice the preposition in all these things. Not after these things have happened, not despite these things that are happening, we are more than conquerors, but in the midst of the suffering, while it is going on, we are more than conquerors. The victory is not the removal of the suffering. The victory is that we are kept, we are sustained by the grace of God in the midst of the suffering. And notice the tense of the verb, more than conquerors through him who loved us. Past tense, a single completed action on the cross. Not that God loves me, he decides to love me when my circumstances are favorable. But God has loved me at a fixed point in history at the cross. He loved you before your suffering ever began, and there's been nothing that has happened that has changed that since then. But Paul's not finished. He assures us that the love of God holds strong within our suffering, but then he moves in the passage to show you that nothing outside of your suffering can get to you either. Paul makes a list of everything in the universe that might try to separate you from the love of God. There's death and life, angels and rulers, things present and things to come, height and depth. Paul goes through every category of existence, and then at the end he says, No anything else and all of creation, as if he might have forgotten something. And Paul's conclusion at the end is that he looked high and low, and he has found that there is nothing in all of creation that can separate you from the love of God in Christ Jesus. In 1944, Corey Tin Boom and her sister Betsy were arrested by Nazis for hiding Jews in their home in Holland, and they were sent to a concentration camp. And what they endured at that camp was beyond description. Hunger and humiliation, forced labor, freezing conditions, watching women die around them every day. And after a while, Betsy's body began to give out, getting weaker by the moment, and there was nothing that she and her sister, Corey, could do about it. And so at a really low moment, at a low point, Corey turns to her sister and says, I think God has forgotten us. I think that's it. I think this is where the love of God in Christ has run out for us. If you've ever been in a dark enough place, you know exactly what that feels like. It's not an intellectual conclusion that you might come to. It's what suffering says when it has gone on so long and it feels like it's never going to lift. It's the voice that tells you that the love of God described in Romans 8, it exists in theory, but it does not go to a place that you are in right now. Betsy's answer to her sister was, No, Corey, he has not forgotten us. Remember his word, as the heavens are high above the earth, so great is his steadfast love. Betsy Tinboom died in that concentration camp, and just before she died, she whispered to her sister, We must tell them that there is no pit so deep, that he is not deeper still. Betsy uttered those words at the bottom of a Nazi concentration camp, from a place and a circumstance where you had every evidence to believe that the love of God was not there, that God had forgotten them. But what she found is that even at the bottom of that pit, that the love of God in Christ held for her. Her circumstances did not improve, but she had what Paul says that nothing in all of creation could reach. She's not the only one who has tested that love of God in Christ from the bottom. I can tell you that I have needed that to be true in my own life. Nearly a decade ago now, I preached this same passage at my dad's funeral. And uh one thing that I needed to hear in that service, and that I wanted everyone else who was there to hear, is that death will separate you from everything you love on this earth. Death separated my dad from everything that he loved on this earth, and it will do the same to you. Death separates you from your spouse, from your children, from your grandchildren, from everything you love, the home and the job you have spent your life trying to build, the friends that you love the most, the work that gave life meaning. Everything you love, death will separate you from. But there is one thing that death did not separate my dad from, and there is one thing that not even death can separate you from. The love of God in Christ Jesus, our Lord. My dad had something that pancreatic cancer couldn't take away from him. Because the love of God in Christ goes deeper in cancer. I don't know what it is that you are suffering with, what you brought in with you this morning, but I do know this that the love of God in Christ goes deeper than the suffering that you are facing right now, deeper than where you are right now. The love of God in Christ goes deeper than your diagnosis, it goes deeper than your broken marriage, deeper than the terrible thing you've never told anyone about, deeper than your worst day, and yes, the love of God goes deeper than even death. How deep does the love of God in Christ go? Paul searched, and he could not find the bottom of it. And you and I will not either. Let's pray. Our Father, as we have heard your word this morning, we confess that we need it to be true more than just in a general sense, but for us, we need it to be true in marriages that are struggling and things we're facing that are frightening in life, as we're facing grief and illness that will not lift. And so, Lord, we confess that uh these coins don't always drop, that we can know that this passage is true and it still keep us up awake at night. And so we ask that you would take what's been said and that you would do what only you can do, that you would take uh what has been heard and preached this morning, and you would make it true in our hearts. And that you would let the one who didn't spare his own son, but gave him up for us all, that you would convince us that he's not going to hold out on lesser things for us. Let the one who has declared the verdict that can't be overturned, may he silence the voice that will not go quiet. And Lord, let the love that holds us at the bottom of the deepest pit, may that be true, and may it hold us and sustain us today. We pray this in the name of Jesus. Amen.