GOD'S GREAT NEWS for MAN'S GREAT PROBLEM - Romans 1-8

"May They Know They're Loved ..."

I spoke this week with my parents the day before they took a big trip to Europe, a trip they have been planning and hoping to make for 18 years. I had the opportunity to pray a prayer of blessing for them, and it caused me to reflect on the greatest gift my parents have given me: they have prayed daily for me for years. What a gift of love! Then I thought of the prayers I pray at night with my own children, and how important those prayers are to me, because my children are so precious to me. The one prayer I have prayed more than any other, as often as I pray with them, is this prayer: "Heavenly Father, I pray that this child with know they are loved by their Dad, by their Mom, and most of all by You, Lord. May they know they're loved ..." The most powerful force for good in the universe is unleashed inside us when we know God loves us. As my children come to know how perfectly they are loved by God, they becomes conquerors in life.

I came across a story this week that documents what happens when we know we're loved.
Prayers at night with the kids ...

When they are loved, they become conquerors.

Story ...

God's love, not man's love ...

The Advocating Love of God: the Son

I wanted to tell that parable about Manny because it returns us to the courtroom scene. When we studied Romans 1:18-3:26, we found ourselves often in the cold courtroom of God. God was the presiding Judge, and all humanity cowered under the irrefutable charge that both Jews and Greeks are all under sin. Our only hope as red-handed sinners was to throw ourselves on the mercy of the court.

Here in Rom. 8:31-34, Paul returns us to that courtroom scene, bearing us aloft on the triumph of the love of God in Christ. God still sits as Judge, but He has declared us righteous. His verdict has been announced: not only are we not guilty, we are bound for glory. Even more, this God who is Judge is also now our adopting Father. And the only Man who might stand to condemn us, the only perfect Man, Jesus Christ, does not come to press charges, but to be our Advocate. Thus, in the fearsome courtroom of God, we find ourselves embraced by the Judge who is our Father and by our Savior who is our Advocate. The cold courtroom has warmed greatly, becoming the birthplace of our eternal life in fellowship with our God.

Paul provides us with not only the resolution of the courtroom drama he has written for us, but he shows us the love of the Son for us in vs. 31-34. In vs. 26, 27, Paul demonstrated the helping love of God expressed through the Spirit who perfectly understands our pain and communicates that pain in a perfect mind-meld with our Father who cares for us. The love of God through the Spirit is so deeply personal it is too deep for words. In vs. 28-30, the sovereign love of the Father for us is almost too large for words: it has spanned all eternity beyond time, and it transcends our adverse circumstances. Our God has set His love on us, causing all things to work together for good to those who love Him and to those who are called according to His purpose. Now, in vs. 31-34, we see the advocating love of the Son revealed, where our Savior who died for us now stands at the right hand of the Father in the heavenlies, making intercession for us. God loves us indeed: by the Holy Spirit from within, by the Father in all things, and by the Son who is our eternal Advocate.

We will let the internal structure of Rom. 8:31-34 guide our study today. This passage is comprised of five rhetorical questions, the last two of which are explicitly answered by the love of God expressed through Jesus Christ. We will study each question, one-by-one.

What shall we say to these things?

To understand Paul's first question, let's recap Rom. 8:28-30: "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. For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the first-born 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."

In light of this sovereign love of God for each one of His believing children; in light of His perfect weaving of all our circumstances, black threads of darkness, red threads of pain, silver threads of joy, and gold threads of prosperity, into a beautiful tapestry; in light of how He set His love on each of us before time began and how He plans to fill us with glory when this age ends ... what can we say? We are rendered speechless before the universe of God's love for us, an expanse so great we can only shake our heads in disbelief that One so large and in such perfect control could love us so much to weave all things to work together for good for us.

This is the second time Paul has rendered humanity speechless in the book of Romans. The first time was in the cold courtroom of God at the end of Paul's devastating closing arguments. His charge that all are under sin had been proven beyond reasonable doubt by the precepts of the Hebrew Scriptures. Mankind was silenced by his own undeniable sin under the Law. Paul said it this way in Rom. 3:19, 20: "Now we know that whatever the Law says, it speaks to those who are under the Law, that every mouth may be closed, and all the world may become accountable to God; because by the works of the Law no flesh will be justified in His sight; for through the Law comes the knowledge of sin." Our mouths were glued shut by our own guilt.

By utter contrast, God has now revealed His salvation through Jesus Christ, and the glory to which all believers are destined. His love for us expressed through Jesus Christ on the cross, expressed within us by the indwelling Spirit, expressed through the timeless and certain plan of God for us, has rendered us speechless in the piercing light of His glory. Truly, what shall we say to these things? Words are such small things to express such love, such glory. It is better to remain in silent awe.

In the story I told in the beginning, the moment when the deepest love was expressed was a moment of silence. The Rolex man wordlessly unclasped his expensive watch and handed it across the aisle to the homeless youth. And what did the homeless youth do? Did he call out in a loud voice, "Thanks, Dude!" Of course not: he blushed quietly at the enormity of love publicly expressed in that quiet action. So we respond to the love of our God expressed in countless ways, and most eloquently expressed in the quiet drama of the cross. May we too blush in silence, flushed with the warmth of God's love ... and may we receive that love with both hands.

If God is for us, who is against us?

Paul's next question is of the same calibre: If God is for us, who is against us? If the Judge behind the bench has already worked all the details of our case together for good for each of us who loves God and is called according to His purpose, who can stand against us? Is there anyone who can?

What about the accuser of the brethren, the diabolos, Satan? Notice that the question is about a person or being: who is against us? Paul does not ask what is against us. In light of the sovereign love of God, in light of the pure love expressed on the cross, in light of the victory of Easter's resurrection morning ... in light of all that, can Satan stand against us?

I find it intriguing that in all of Romans 1-8, there is not even a single mention of Satan. In fact, in all of the book of Romans, all sixteen chapters, there is only one small passing reference, and that at the very end of the book. In Rom. 16:20, Paul mentions Satan in exactly the way you and I ought to view him. Paul says, "And the God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet. The grace of our Lord Jesus be with you." Satan is crushed: the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ is the final word. So, where is Satan? He is the vanquished foe, crushed beneath the feet of God? ... that's not what Paul writes here ... crushed beneath the feet of our risen Christ? ... that's not what Paul writes either ... Paul says Satan is crushed beneath your feet, the feet of all believers everywhere. If God is for us, who is against us? Satan? No ... he is a vanquished foe, crushed like a slithering serpent beneath our feet.

If Satan cannot stand against us, no adversary can. The implicit answer to the question "If God is for us, who is against us?" is: NO ONE, NO BEING SPIRITUAL OR PHYSICAL, CAN STAND AGAINST US. We are absolutely victorious in Christ Jesus our Lord.

This victory over Satan was foretold in the prophecy of Gen. 3:15 when God announced doom to the serpent in the garden by telling him, "And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; He shall bruise you on the head, and you shall bruise him on the heel." It is striking that Paul applies the fulfillment of that prophecy not just to Jesus Christ, but to the seed of Christ, to all of us who believe in Him, in Rom. 16:20. But that victory we enjoy was a direct result of the triumph of Jesus Christ over Satan on the cross and by the resurrection. Thus, Paul's next question is about the cross of Christ.

If God spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how will God not with Christ freely give us all things?

Paul asks, "He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how will He not with Him freely give us all things?" Paul considers the cross, and he reprises the timeless truths of God as the Great Giver, the truths we studied in Rom. 5:17, when Paul said, "For if by the transgression of the one, death reigned through the one, much more those who receive the abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the One, Jesus Christ." God is the Great Giver, and we are to joyously receive His gifts with a childlike delight.

Paul now asks, If God is so great a Giver that He gave us His prized possession, His Son, His only Son, the One whom He loved, delivering Him to the cross for our salvation, how will this giving God not with Christ freely give us all things? The verb "will He freely give" is the verb form of the noun charis, or grace. If God has so showered us with grace abounding through Jesus Christ, giving us the greatest gift that will never expire or be exhausted, how will He withhold any good thing from us? God is the Great Giver, who giveth, and giveth and giveth again.

Annie Johnson Flint understood her God to be the Great Giver, writing about Him in a poem entitled God's Giving:

He giveth more grace when the burdens grow greater,
He sendeth more strength when the labors increase;
To added affliction He addeth His mercies,
To multiplied trials His multiplied peace.

When we have exhausted our store of endurance,
When our strength has failed ere the day is half done,
When we reach the end of our hoarded resources
Our Father's full giving is only begun.

His love has no limit, His grace has no measure,
His power no boundary known unto men;
For out of His infinite riches in Jesus
He giveth and giveth and giveth again.

Some gifts are so exquisitely expressed that they stay in the memory forever, quietly continuing to give hope and encouragement as they are remembered. Jill and Stuart Briscoe received such a gift one day on a mission trip to the Sahara. Here is the story, in Stuart's words:

"Brilliant sunshine, blue skies and endless expanses of white sand. Sounds like paradise. Why haven't the developers seen the potential? Well, it's the Sahara. There is no water, the sand isn't always white. In fact, the terrain in one part of the Sahara is made up of something resembling black cinders -- as far as the eye can see.

When my wife, Jill, and I flew in to a missionary outpost in this incredibly inhospitable desert, we thought that we had never seen any place so desolate, so dry, so drab. Nothing grew, and nothing moved. In the midst of this black expanse of nothingness, in the backyard of the missionary dwelling, we noticed a splash of green and a flash of orange. On closer inspection we found a tiny bush clinging tenaciously to life, proudly bearing a solitary rose. Beside the bush was a hole, a few feet deep, hacked out of the cinders and half filled with decaying vegetable matter from the kitchen.

The missionaries told us that the rosh bush had been planted in a similar hole filled with vegetable matter. The missionaries, who had nurtured and nursed the plant into life and survival, proudly said, 'This is the first flower we have produced in this desert!' There it bloomed -- fragile and fragrant -- a testimony to loving care, endless patience and sheer hard work.

Jill, exhausted from much travel, extended ministry and a chronic back problem that caused her constant pain, was promised breakfast in bed the next morning. When breakfast arrived, lovingly prepared and meticulously arranged, there on the tray in a slender glass was the solitary orange rose. A handwritten card propped against the glass said simply, 'Thank you for coming all this way.' When Jill saw it, she cried. I, being the British male, swallowed hard. Our missionary hostess shyly explained, 'We wanted to tell you how grateful we are that you came.'

Many messages of appreciation have been showered on us through the years, but this one sticks in our memories. Why? Because the message of love was not just spoken or written; it was performed in a singular, gracious and sacrificial way. Jesus gave us a message of love too. But he didn't just talk about love. He performed it, sacrificially."

Having given all, having given the best, why would our God withhold the rest?

Who will bring a charge against God's elect? Not God as Judge and Justifier

Paul's final two questions return us to the courtroom scene, since both are essentially legal questions. In vs. 33, Paul asks, "Who will bring a charge against God's elect?" In the previous three questions, Paul has let the obvious answer remain implicit. But he follows this question with an immediate answer: "Who will bring a charge against God's elect? God is the one who justifies;."

Like the Judge asking the Rolex man if he wanted to press charges against Manny, the very one who alone could press charges, but he refused to do so. Instead, he gives from himself sacrificially, setting all aright, making whole the very one who had sinned against him.

What Paul is saying is that God had already brought the charge, and Paul had already stated it in Rom. 3:9: "... for we have already charged that both Jews and Greeks are all under sin." At that point in Romans, Paul is the prosecuting attorney, prosecuting God's case against the human race. And God's charge stuck, being proved by the Hebrew Scriptures and the painful history of human violence, bloodshed, treachery and lying. But this same God whose charge against humanity silenced all appeal is the same God who provided a means by which the offending sinner could be made righteous: by believing in Jesus Christ, whose death on the cross purchased the sinner's soul for God. As Paul said in Rom. 3:23-26: "For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified as a gift by His grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus; whom God displayed publicly as an atoning sacrifice in His blood through faith. This was to demonstrate His righteousness, because in the forbearance of God He passed over the sins previously committed; for the demonstration of His righteousness at the present time, that He might be just and justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus." Paul's point is this: God as Judge already brought the charges, and He already satisfied Himself by the substitution Christ provided for all the guilty ones, even going to far as to substitute Christ's perfect righteousness for the sinner's unrighteousness. God as Judge was God the Justifier; the charge had already been brought and the penalty paid; the defendant was acquitted, set free.

No charge will ever be brought again! There is no double jeopardy. We are eternally exonerated by the shed blood of Jesus Christ. And it is by that greatest mystery of all: in Stott's phrase, God's self-satisfaction by self-substitution. He is the Judge and Justifier, the Prosecutor and the Prosecuted, demanding payment to Himself and making payment with Himself. The case is closed.

Who is the one who condemns? Not Christ our Advocate

Paul asks one final legal question in vs. 34: "Who is the one who condemns?" Again, Paul answers his own question, to make sure we are doubly clear on this crucial subject. He says, "Who is the one who condemns? Christ Jesus is He who died, yes, rather who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who also intercedes for us." This summarizes the advocating love of the Son for us: He died for us, He was raised for us, and for all eternity He stands at the right hand of God making intercession for us. He lived, died, and lives again for us. All for us.

William Barclay makes a wonderful observation about this celebration of Jesus Christ and His work for us in vs. 34: "He is saying four things about Jesus. (a) He died. (b) He rose again. (c) He is at the right hand of God. (d) He makes intercession for us there. Now the earliest creed of the Church, which is still the essence of all Christian creeds, ran like this: 'He was crucified dead and buried; the third day he rose again from the dead; and sitteth at the right hand of God; from thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead.' Three items in Paul's statement and in the early creed are the same, that Jesus died, rose again, and is at the right hand of God. But the fourth is different. In the creed the fourth is that Jesus will come to be the judge of the quick and the dead. In Paul the fourth is that Jesus is at God's right hand to plead our case." What a dramatic twist! Whereas Paul's reader might have been expecting Paul to conclude his fourfold statement about Jesus Christ with the stern description of Jesus as Judge, Paul transforms the image before their very eyes: Jesus is our court-appointed Advocate, standing right beside the Father, having gained the Father's ear ... and in that divine ear our Advocate pleads our cause. Barclay concludes: "With one tremendous leap of thought Paul has seen Christ, not as the Judge but as the lover of the souls of men."

When might Paul have seen this heavenly vision of Jesus Christ? Let us return to the stirring scene painted by Luke at the end of Acts 7. The saintly Stephen has just told the Jews they are stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart, always resisting the Holy Spirit. The Jews surround him, faces contorted with rage, gnashing their teeth. But Stephen doesn't see their faces. Stephen's eyes see Someone else. Here is Luke's tale, in Acts 7:54-58: "Now when they heard this, they were cut to the quick, and they began gnashing their teeth at him. But being full of the Holy Spirit, he gazed intently into heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God; and he said, 'Behold, I see the heavens opened up and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.' But they cried out with a loud voice, and covered their ears, and they rushed upon him with one impulse. And when they had driven him out of the city, they began stoning him, and the witnesses laid aside their robes at the feet of a young man named Saul." This is when Saul first heard about the risen Christ standing at the right hand of God. What Stephen saw and bore witness to, Saul of Tarsus heard, and Paul the Apostle wrote about here in Rom. 8:34.

What a Savior!! What an Advocate!! Just as Manny expected the Rolex man to press charges, because he was the only one who had the right to do so, he discovered the Rolex man to be a man of love and forgiveness. Expecting a man of condemnation, he found a man of grace: giving him the watch, giving him a name, giving him a home, giving him himself!

Conclusion: Our Loving Savior and Advocate

Oh what glory in this passage!!! The advocating love of the Son, who does not condemn, but who is our Advocate, pleading our case in the ear of the Father! Jesus is for us in all things, as the Father works all things together for good to those who love Him, to those who are called according to His purpose.

This makes me want to know and love my Jesus Christ far better than I do today! Let me close with a wonderful poem by Dan Crawford, entitled Jesus and I:

I can not do it alone;
The waves run fast and high,
And the fogs close chill around,
And the light goes out in the sky;
But I know that we two shall win in the end --
Jesus and I.

I can not row it myself,
My boat on the raging sea;
But beside me sits Another,
Who pulls or steers with me;
And I know that we too shall come into port --
His child and He.

Coward and wayward and weak,
I change with the changing sky,
Today so eager and brave,
Tomorrow not caring to try;
But He never gives in, so we two shall win --
Jesus and I.

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