2017 07.30 Romans 8:26-39 26 Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. 27 And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. 28 We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose. 29 For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn within a large family. 30 And those whom he predestined he also called; and those whom he called he also justified; and those whom he justified he also glorified. 31 What then are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who is against us? 32 He who did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up for all of us, will he not with him also give us everything else? 33 Who will bring any charge against God s elect? It is God who justifies. 34 Who is to condemn? It is Christ Jesus, who died, yes, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us. 35 Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? 36 As it is written, For your sake we are being killed all day long; we are accounted as sheep to be slaughtered. 37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38 For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, 39 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. 1
Separation Anxiety Many of you know that I have a dog Phoebe. She s a Maltese and a sweet girl. I used to have two dogs. Phoebe s roommate Bory, also a Maltese, died in March of this year. Despite living together for eight years, Phoebe and Bory never cared much for each other. Their relationship was one of tolerance, not affection. That was due, in part, to their starkly different personalities. Bory was mellow for the most part, although he could be demanding when it came time for dinner. But other than eating, he didn t have much enthusiasm for getting up off the bed or the couch. He spent almost the entire day on one cushion or another. Phoebe, on the other hand, is a bundle of energy. Her mindset is always go go go! She attacks her toys with glee, shaking them with her jaw and then tossing them into the air. Even now, at nine years of age and blind with cataracts, she is spry and playful, as the scratches on my hands attest [VIDEO]. Like I said, there was no great love between Phoebe and Bory. The funny thing is, the reason we got Bory was to keep Phoebe company. We had Phoebe first. We noticed early on that she had separation anxiety. She became anxious anytime she was left alone. That s why Sandy and I were so concerned after Bory died. We feared that Phoebe s anxiety would keep us from leaving the apartment at the same time. What would we do with her on Sunday mornings when we both went to church? Fortunately, we had anticipated this possibility. Even before Bory got sick we went out and purchased a CCTV camera. Through a mobile phone app that connects to the camera wirelessly, we can be away from home but still monitor Phoebe back in the apartment. There s also audio. We can hear her and we can even speak to her to settle her down, if necessary. 2
Phoebe is a smart girl. She can sense when we re about to leave the apartment. To keep her from panicking, every time we leave we turn it into a game. We leave little pieces of dried chicken spread throughout the living room. The idea is that she associates our leaving with something positive. Plus it occupies her for a few minutes, giving us just enough time to get out the front door in peace. The danger comes once she s found all the chicken. That s when she realizes that she s alone. When Bory was alive and they shared the house together, Phoebe would sometimes growl at him as a warning to keep his distance. But whenever we went out, leaving the two of them to themselves, she would cling to him, often parking herself next to him on the couch. Now when we go out, once she has eaten all the chicken, she panics. Her dog brain goes into a primal state. She jumps up on the couch and howls. It s one of the saddest and sweetest things I ve ever heard. Howling is her way of telling us, Come back! Don t leave me alone! Even though we always come home (every time!), Phoebe doesn t know this. While dogs can remember past events, they don t perceive the future the way we do. So, even though I ve left the house thousands of times and returned home the exact same number of times, Phoebe doesn t know that I will return. That s why every day when I come home it s the greatest day of her life. She shrieks and jumps and demands to lick my face. It s like she thinks, I can t believe he came home! He s here! He s really here! Dogs live in the moment. When Sandy and I leave home, all Phoebe knows is that in that moment we are not there. She is alone. Her response to that existential fear of being separated from us is a plaintive howl. 3
Humans may not resort to howling, but we too have a deep-seated fear of separation. We fear being separated from those whom we love and who love us. That is what makes the death of a close friend or family member so horrible. Death separates us from those we love. For Christians, that fear of separation extends to our relationship with God. As we reach the climax of chapter 8 of Romans, we see Paul addressing the Christian s existential fear of being separated from the love of God in Jesus Christ. Many of us have been there, and if you haven t yet, you will. At some point in your life you reach a crisis of faith. Often times it s brought on by some kind of tragedy the untimely death of a loved one, or chronic illness, or the end of a long-term relationship. In that time, when suffering is an unwelcome and persistent guest in your life, it s easy to think one of two things: either that (1) God is punishing you for some sin you may have committed, or (2) and perhaps even worse, that God is indifferent to your suffering. God has withdrawn God s presence from your life. Paul s response to that kind of existential fear is to assure the first-century church in Rome, and to assure all of us today, that God, who did not withhold God s own Son from us, would not allow anything to come between us and God. No sin, no guilt, no hardship, no suffering, no nothing! You would think that by now, with 2000 years of history, the church would have learned that lesson. But it s a lesson that we need to learn over and over again. Even as we proclaim, as it says in 1 John, that God is love, we still have a hard time accepting that nothing can separate us from that love [SLIDE]. In that regard, we re not alone. God s people have struggled with this concept since before there was even a church. In 586 BC, the nation of Judah, i.e., the southern kingdom of what was once the united kingdom of Israel, was conquered by Babylon. 4
The holy city of Jerusalem was captured, the temple was destroyed, and the people were led into exile. This caused an existential crisis for the people. Imagine yourself as a Jew in that time. You are God s chosen people. God has formed a covenant with you. Yet now your city is devastated, the central place of worship lies in ruins. Worst of all, you are now a prisoner in a foreign land, a land that belongs to the enemies of God. Exile meant that you had been cut off, separated, not only from the land but also from God. Judah had to come to terms with the unthinkable. They had to make sense of something that they thought was impossible. And so they interpreted the exile as both God s punishment for their sins and as God s absence. The book of Lamentations, which was written during the exile, ends with the writer pleading to God on behalf of the people: 20 Why have you forgotten us completely? Why have you forsaken us these many days? 21 Restore us to yourself, O LORD, that we may be restored; renew our days as of old 22 unless you have utterly rejected us, and are angry with us beyond measure (Lam. 5:20-22). It s not only in the Old Testament that God s people experience separation from God [SLIDE]. Chapter 20 of the Gospel of John describes the activities of the disciples after the crucifixion but before the resurrection. Picture the scene. The disciples are hiding in a house with the doors locked. They are afraid that they might suffer the same fate as Jesus. Behind those locked doors, they are in a kind of exile. They have been cut off from friends, family, and most of all, their leader who has been crucified. 5
They are in the midst of an existential crisis similar to that experienced by Judah 600 years earlier during the exile. They had thought that Jesus was the chosen one. They had thought that he was the Messiah who would restore Israel to glory. They were going to witness him sit on the throne in Jerusalem. James and John had even asked to sit in positions of honor at his left and right. But with his execution, the disciples were now, so they thought, separated from him forever. The experience of separation from God is real. It was felt by Israel in exile. It was felt by the disciples after the crucifixion. You have felt it yourself (I certainly have), or if you haven t yet, you will. Okay, but then what can we do about it? What can we do when our prayers are met with stony silence? What do we do when we ve run out of words to pray? What can we do when the sense of separation from God leaves us numb? This will sound counterintuitive...but...nothing. There is nothing we can do. Yet there is something that God does. The Spirit of God intercedes for us [SLIDE]. The Spirit helps us in our weakness, Paul writes, for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words (Rom. 8:26). When that sense of separation from God leaves us speechless, when there are no more words that we can summon, the Spirit intercedes for us. This is a theme that Paul has touched on again and again throughout Romans 8: what we cannot do for ourselves, God has done for us. Two weeks ago we heard how God in Christ set us free from captivity to sin and death and declared us not guilty. Last week we heard about our adoption in Jesus Christ. In our adoption God claims us as God s own people. Just as Israel was liberated from slavery in Egypt and called to be God s people, so we have been freed from slavery to sin and adopted as God s own. 6
Now Paul is taking it one step further. He is telling us that even our experience of suffering and isolation does not separate us from the love of God. Suffering and isolation are not signs that God has abandoned us, for even in our suffering and isolation, God is at work, interceding for us not only with sighs too deep for words but also actively working to bring good from tragedy, to redeem evil for God s good purposes [SLIDE]. Paul writes, We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose (Rom. 8:28). This is a well known verse. It s sometimes interpreted as meaning that everything that happens is good because God has ordained it. Even the evil that we experience and the evil that we ourselves do is actually good because God has ordained that it be so for reasons that remain mysterious to us. Famines, floods, pediatric cancer... they re all ultimately good because God has ordained them. That s a bitter theological pill to swallow. But wait, there s more. All things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose (Rom. 8:28). Those who are called according to his purpose. Does that mean that some are not called according to his purpose? Or to use the language found in the next verse [SLIDE], are some predestined to glory while others are predestined to damnation? That s what Paul s saying, right? All of what I ve just described is the traditional way that Presbyterian theology has understood God s will to be manifest in the world: God ordains all things. God predestines some to go upstairs and some to go downstairs. Predestination. The word itself inspires fear and loathing, even among many Presbyterians. The God of predestination seems to be an arbitrary tyrant who exercises power for the sake of power alone. So we have to ask ourselves, is this the God that Paul has been describing throughout chapter 8 as we ve read these last three weeks? Is this the God who in Jesus Christ takes on our sin so that we are 7
declared not guilty? Is this the God who in Jesus Christ adopts us as his own and forms us into the people of God? The God whom Paul has described in Romans 8 is not an arbitrary God who exercises power for power s sake. The God whom Paul describes is made known to us on the cross. And what we see on the cross is the overflowing, overcoming, overwhelming love of God. We see a God who will not let anything come between him and his beloved children. We see a God who predestines us for his love. That is the God that Paul describes, a God who freely loves, who freely gives of himself, of his own flesh and blood, for our behalf. As the Pharisees did with the law, the church has tried to make this passage about us when it is really about God. The church has tried to make this passage about who s in and who s out. We ve used it to draw boundaries when what Paul is describing is a God who has erased the boundaries between Jews and Gentiles. In adoption, God has taken those who were outside the boundaries and brought them into the family of Jesus Christ, the firstborn within a large family (Rom. 8:29). In Jesus Christ, we have been made members of God s family. We have been formed into a community that serves and glorifies God, a community that is free from preoccupation with ourselves and free for thankful service to God. Predestination is not about us declaring who is or isn t on God s team. Predestination is the working of God s love. Predestination is God bringing us into God s family. Nothing can change that. Nothing can separate us from the love that God has shown us in Jesus Christ. I know that sounds pretty basic, like entry-level Christianity or Christianity for Dummies, but Christians often have a hard time accepting this good news. We don t appreciate just how radical God s grace is. In a culture such as Korea s where the standard is often perfection perfect grades, perfect looks, perfect prayers, and perfect lives there is little room for grace. And where there is little 8
room for grace, there is a lot of room for anxiety. When we don t appreciate grace, we become anxious that something can, or already has, separated us from the love of Jesus Christ. We act is if God s love is conditional. We think that God will love me if I attend dawn prayer, if I pray for 30 minutes a day, if I read the Bible every day, if I... We set all kinds of conditions on God s love, conditions that if we fail to meet then separate us from God. But Paul assures us that nothing can separate us from God s love! Really? Nothing? Nothing! Who will separate us from the love of Christ? (Rom. 8:36). Will hardship? Nothing! Or distress? Nothing! Or persecution? Nothing! Or famine? Nothing! Or nakedness? Nothing! Or peril? Nothing! Nothing you ve thought, nothing you ve said, nothing you ve done, nothing you ve failed to do has the power to separate you from the love of God in Jesus Christ. But, Pastor, what I did is so terrible that. Nothing! What s more, no suffering, however great, is a sign that God has withdrawn his love. In fact, suffering suggests not so much God s absence as God s presence the presence of a God who knows personally what it is to suffer to suffer betrayal, to suffer abandonment, to suffer mockery, to suffer torture, to suffer even death. That God, made known to us in Jesus Christ, will allow nothing to separate us from his love. All this nothing is really something. 9