Confident in Christ

Romans 8:31:

“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 he not also 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 Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? As it is written, ‘For your sake we[’re] being killed all the day long; we[’re] regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.’

“No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I[’m] sure”—or “I am persuaded”[1]—“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.”

Amen.

As boys in the Bible class, we were taught a prayer for the illuminating work of the Holy Spirit when we turn to the Bible. And I’m going to pray that simple prayer now, and you can join me:

Make the Book live to me, O Lord.
Show me yourself within your Word,
Show me myself and show me my Savior,
And make the Book live to me.[2]

Amen.

Well, I want to confess to a certain nostalgia when I think of a character who was part of my life in the ’50s and ’60s. It was, in the ’50s and ’60s, the longest-running TV detective series in America. I saw it first, I think, on black and white on my grandmother’s TV. And I’m thinking of who was my favorite attorney, Perry Mason. And Perry Mason always successfully defended his client. He managed to make sure that when he was building his final arguments at the end of the case, there was resolution, and there was freedom for the one that he represented.

In fact, I was so fascinated by Perry Mason and by law that when I was in my late teens and into my early twenties, I wanted only three things: I wanted a law degree, I wanted a BMW 2002, and I wanted an American girl called Susan Jones. Here I stand with no law degree, no BMW 2002, but married to Susan Jones for fifty years. So God knows what he’s doing. He doesn’t withhold things from us.

Your Christian experience has not actually begun with you. It has begun with God. And that which he has begun he promises to bring to completion.

Now, I mention that in beginning because there is a sense in which what we have in 31–39 is Paul’s closing argument. And in a quite magnificent fashion, he doesn’t establish our innocence. In fact, he’s made very clear the fact of our guilt. And he is making it absolutely clear that our freedom in Jesus is because the Jesus in whom we have come to trust is the one who has borne our punishment.

And throughout the verses of Romans, beyond Romans 8 itself, he has made it perfectly clear that in Jesus we have an entirely new identity; that ultimately, our identity is not tied to our height, our weight, our ethnicity, our success, or our status, but in Jesus we are included in the most wonderful expression of God’s goodness that we can possibly know. And because we’ve been given a new identity, we have a new mentality. I mean, that’s C. S. Lewis again: “I believe in Jesus, and in believing in Jesus, I see everything differently.”[3] Our view of politics, our view of acquisition, our view of kindness—whatever it might be—is framed because the Bible is showing us what is true and what we can avoid. And as a result of that, we have an identity that then gives to us a destiny.

And Paul is addressing, as you know, these believers in Rome, and he’s essentially now reminding them of what he does elsewhere—classically, perhaps, in Philippians 1, where, as he writes in the beginning of his Philippian letter, he says to the readers, “I am [convinced] of this”—“I’m confident of this”—“that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.”[4] In other words, your Christian experience has not actually begun with you. It has begun with God. And that which he has begun he promises to bring to completion.

And he wants the readers to be thinking properly about these things. And there is in this closing argument, I suggest to you, a compelling logic. Notice how he—if you can imagine him actually saying this… Let’s imagine that he was here, and he says, “And those he has justified he has glorified.”[5] And then, in a rhetorical moment, he stops, and he says, “Now, what else is there to say concerning this?” And, of course, there’s quite a bit still to say. What is there left to say? Well, the summation is all that is left to say. And what he does now is to give to us a number of basic questions and a number of bold declarations. The questions are clear and the declarations equally so.

Basic Questions

First of all, he asks the question, “If God is for us, who can be against us?”

There’s no uncertainty in this. The God who calls and the God who justifies, he says, is on our side. And since he is on our side, we may then have a confidence that doesn’t reside in ourselves. That’s why we were singing, incidentally (thank you, Michael),

Did we in our own strength confide,
Our striving would be losing,
Were not the right man on our side,
The man of God’s own choosing;
Doth ask who [this might] be?
Christ Jesus, it is he.[6]

That’s what he’s saying here: If God is for us, who can be against us? Whenever opposition comes our way—and it will come our way. What he’s saying is not that there won’t be any opposition. He’s made that perfectly clear in all of his writings and, indeed, in his living. But ultimately, what he’s saying is it is, in the scheme of things, of no real account—not that it doesn’t exist, but he just puts it in perspective.

For example, when you think about the nation of Israel: They had been the beneficiaries of God’s amazing goodness to them. He had picked them up out of the bondage of Egypt. He had brought them out into the safety of his provision. And yet, along the way of the journey of life, they had lost sight of this very truth. And it is classically revealed to us in a story that we all learned from Sunday school. If we didn’t learn much else, we learned about the wonder of Goliath and the transforming impact of David. While the armies of Israel stood ranged against the Philistines and the brothers of David were doing nothing about it at all, he shows up, you will remember, bringing bread and cheese from his dad. And they are not at all impressed with this: “Why did you show up here? Did you just come to see the fight?”[7] To which, if I’d been David, I would have said, “What fight? There is no fight. I’ve been here about a fortnight, and nobody’s doing anything. What is going on here?”

And then, eventually, when he steps forward, having unshackled himself from Saul’s armor, and looks this big guy in the face, he says to him, “You come against me with sword and javelin, but I come against you in the name of the Lord Almighty.” And he says, “And this day, the Lord will give you into my hand, and I will strike you down, and I will cut off your head.”[8]

What? You got to be crazy! You’re standing there, half the guy’s height. He’s got a shield that’s the size of a barn door, and you’ve got a sling and five stones? “If the Lord had not been on our side, let Israel say…”[9] “If God be for us…”[10]

Now, Paul knows this history, and so he says, “I can prove it to you. Here’s the evidence of God’s grace towards us.” Here it is: “If he did not spare his own Son…” “If he didn’t spare his own Son”—and he didn’t! Incidentally, “his own Son” is the same phrase that you find in verse 3, if you—or even have your Bible in front of you. It is a very specific phrase, because he’s distinguishing between the many sons and daughters that God has by way of adoption and “his own Son,” eternal and incomparable.

And you will remember in the garden, when Jesus prayed, “Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me.”[11] The Father did not remove the cup of suffering from his dearly beloved Son—so that all of us in Christ, realizing that he has drunk the bitter cup, we may enjoy the cup of blessing. And so he says he didn’t spare his only Son, but he “gave him up for us all.”

Incidentally, that’s why, Michael, we sang, “How deep the Father’s love for us, how vast beyond all measure.”[12] The idea that somehow or another, that Christ was an unwilling participant in the plan of the Father is nothing less than heresy. You listen to people talk about the Bible, talk about the Old Testament, and how God was in the Old Testament, how he is in the New Testament. The worst page you have in your Bible, as Alec Motyer used to say, is the page in between Malachi and Matthew. And he used to say to his students, “Tear that page out of your Bible. Tear it out of your Bible!” Because it makes you think about things in a very wrong way, and not least of all in terms of the posture of God from eternity to eternity.

Let me give you a long quote—longish, purposefully, not as filler. I could do filler, but this is not filler. I’ve done enough history essays in my life to know how to do filler. But anyway, this is Stott. This is Stott. Listen carefully to this, ’cause this is very good:

When we talk of the Father’s plan and the Son’s sacrifice, we should not think of the Father laying on the Son an ordeal he was unwilling to bear nor of the Son extracting from the Father a salvation he was unwilling to bestow. It is true that the Father gave the Son. It is equally true that the Son gave himself. We mustn’t speak of God punishing Jesus or of Jesus persuading God. We must never make Christ the object of God’s punishment or God the object of Christ’s persuasion. For the Father and Son are subjects, not objects, taking the initiative together to save sinners[13]

—so that what the Father has planned the Son has procured and the Spirit has applied.

Winslow, in an earlier century, said, “Who delivered up Jesus to die? Not Judas, for money; not Pilate, for fear; not the Jews, for envy;—but the Father, for love!”[14] Just read again Isaiah 53, and ponder what is being expressed there when he said, “It was the will of God to bruise him.”[15]

Will he not, then, if that is the case… Here is the progression of his thought: “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”—here’s the question—“how will he not also [along] with him graciously give us all things?” It’s a straightforward argument, isn’t it? If God has given us the greatest gift—the best that we could possibly enjoy—in Jesus, then he’s not going to withhold from us all the blessings of grace that he wants us to experience and to enjoy as we live for Jesus. In fact, somewhere in the Bible it says that he gives us all things richly to enjoy.[16] “Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine! Oh, what a foretaste of glory divine!”[17]

Now, when it says here “all things,” be careful, especially in your Bible study groups and in your house. Because somebody’ll put up their hand and say, “I’d like to tell you what ‘all things’ means to me.” Okay? And you must say, “Mrs. Jenkins, please go and put the coffee on. We’ll talk about that later. Because we’re not interested right now on what it means to you, because first of all we have to understand what it means before we find out what it means to you. Because if we only listen to what it means to you and we don’t know what it means, there’s no saying where the Bible study group is going to end up, and it’s not even 8:15.” Right? So, there we have it.

“‘All things’ is an obvious example of an expression in universal terms” that is being “used in a restrictive sense.”[18] “An expression in universal terms used in a restrictive sense”—in the same way that we take verse 28, that “all things … for good.” “For good.” Who determines the good? The Father determines the good. What does the “all things” mean? Does it mean that if you will follow Jesus, then you will get a BMW 2002, and you will get a law degree, and you might get the girl as well? No! He knows all the things that are necessary for us. He knows all the things that are best for us. He’s our Father. That’s why, as fathers, we say, “No, I know you think it’s a great idea to have a 1200cc BMW touring bicycle, but you’ve fallen off your pedal bike so many times that I don’t think this is part of the ‘all’ that is good for you, son, in going into the future.”

Do you remember the sinking feeling you had when on Christmas Day you were waiting for that train set, and you took the train out of the box, and you saw the dreaded phrase “Batteries not included”? And some people’ve got the idea that somehow or another, that’s going to be our experience. And Paul is saying, “Don’t be crazy! If God has given us his best in Jesus, will he not then also provide you with all that is necessary?” And he knows what is best. The Father knows what’s best. “The work which his goodness began the arm of his strength will complete.”[19]

“If God is for us, who could be against us, ultimately? If he gave us his own Son, will he not also with him graciously give us all things?” Here’s another question: He says, “Who shall bring any charge against those whom God has chosen—his elect?”

Now, once again, Paul is not saying that no charges will be brought, but none that can stand. The charges are inviolable, because the case is closed. The verdict has been reached. Justification has been established. And that is why he’s able to say, “There is therefore now no condemnation to them [that] are in Christ Jesus”[20]—that when God has dealt with the predicament in Christ, he’s not going to deal with it a second time in relationship to ourselves. I can’t quote it now, but it’s a quote like that since God has done this to our “surety”—which is an old hymn again—“God cannot twice demand, once at our blessed Surety’s hand and then again at mine.”[21] So there’s no double jeopardy, if you like. Case is closed.

Ah, but Satan comes, doesn’t he? Satan comes, and he says, “Look at Begg. God, look at your guy, Begg. He’s a sinner! How can you declare him justified? How can a sinner be declared justified?”

The Father doesn’t say, “Oh, no, he’s not a sinner.” No, the Father says, “The charges that you bring are valid. But I want you not to look at Begg. I want you to look at my Son, Jesus. I want you to look at his hands, and I want you to look at his feet, and I want you to look at his wounded side. Who are you to condemn? It is Christ Jesus who died.”

You see, this is where the matter of the atonement is so vitally important, that we have it in our minds: that in the cross, God has satisfied his perfect justice. Because he is just, sin has to be punished. Therefore, to exercise his justice, he executes the punishment that our sins deserve. And without that, God wouldn’t be true to himself. But in the cross, he simultaneously pardons those who believe in Christ, even though we are sinners and deserve punishment, deserve condemnation. And without this, then we would be excluded from God’s presence forever.

You remember, was it Portia says to Shylock, you know, “[If] justice be thy plea, consider this”—that in the great scheme of salvation, if we’re going on the basis of justice, none of us would ever be acquitted.[22] That’s Romans 3: “All have sinned and fall[en] short of the glory of God.”[23] Nobody can muster up sufficient to make ourselves acceptable for presence. But we don’t need to!

Because the sinless Savior died,
My sinful soul is counted free,
For God the just is satisfied
To look on him and pardon me.[24]

What about Begg? What about you? What about today? What about how difficult it is? I haven’t been proud of everything I’ve done and said today. Well, the fact is that God wasn’t counting our sins against us, because he was counting our sins against him.[25]

And so, there you have it in 34: “Who is to condemn?” He says, “Listen, here’s the facts: It is Christ Jesus who is the one who died—more than that,” you will see, “who was raised.” This, of course, as we said yesterday, is vitally important, isn’t it? That we serve a living Savior. What good would a dead Savior be? That was what those fellows were on about when they said that the whole of salvation history apparently has come to a crashing end in a Palestinian tomb. And the devil’s looking down and saying, “We finally got him!” And then “up from the grave he arose with a mighty triumph o’er his foes.”[26]

And that’s what Paul is saying here. And it is—Paul didn’t believe that! Paul didn’t believe that for a minute! That’s why he was persecuting the followers of Jesus. And God changed him. And when God changes a life, what he did to Paul he does to everybody—at least these three things. “Oh,” you say, “you mean you get struck with blindness, and so you have to have a friend called Ananias?” No, no, no, no, no. There were unique elements to that. But these were true, and these will always be true: that when Paul was converted, something happened to him. One: He got an entirely new view of who Jesus was. Right? Because he thought Jesus was a fraud. He got an entirely new view of the followers of Jesus, because he was committed to the destruction of the followers of Jesus, and within short order you find him being joined to the disciples, even teaching in the context of their gatherings. And thirdly, he had a new view of God’s mercy. Of God’s mercy. He was, by his own testimony, a proud Pharisee—religious background, good teachers, high intellect, established in what he was doing, convinced of many things. And yet it’s fascinating that he says that the law of God, which he was so committed to keeping, eventually unraveled him.

And you know what he refers to? He refers to covetousness. He says it was covetousness that got him.[27] I wonder what you covet when you’ve gone to the best university, when you’ve got an intellect that can handle most challenges, when you have a status and a significance about yourself. What would you possibly covet? We’ll have to wait till eternity to find out, but surely there’s a possibility that when he did the job of the coat attendant at the stoning of Stephen, and he saw Stephen taking on all that was unleashed against him and lifting his eyes to heaven and declaring his confidence in a risen Jesus, I wonder if he didn’t say, “I don’t have that. There’s something that I don’t have.”

He died. He’s raised. He’s at the right hand of God—whatever that looks like, feels like, is. “The head that once was crowned with thorns is crowned with glory now.”[28] Jesus is the ascended King. He’s in the place of dominion, the place of authority. He’s exalted as the God-Man. His human nature—his human nature, his physicality—is now located somewhere. Yeah! And if his physical, raised body is somewhere—and I know you’re going to think that I’m a horrible person when I say what I’m about to say, and I am a horrible person, but I don’t mean this in any horrible way—since the risen Christ is physically present in heaven, he is not physically present in the Roman Catholic Mass. Okay? So either we have him as an ascended King who has triumphed, and his work is finished, so that we do not need another sacrifice… “There is no other sacrifice, there is no other plea; it is enough that Jesus died and that he died for me,”[29] once and for all. He was “raised for our justification.”[30] He is ascended and is in the position of dominion and authority, no matter what the world says today, no matter Fox News, MSNBC, BBC, whatever else. The fact is, Christ is the ascended King, and nothing is out of control, and nothing is going to be out of control as long as he reigns in heaven—until he returns.

Since he is there, he’s interceding for us, right? You say, “Well, I thought the Holy Spirit was interceding for us.” Well, remember, they are distinct, and they are united in the work of redemption. What is happening in the work of the Spirit wherever we are is happening in an amazing way in the presence of the Father. “Before the throne of God above I have a strong and perfect plea.”[31] On the basis of his once-for-all work of atonement, he continues to secure for those who are his people all the benefits of his death.

And so he asks another question in verse 35: “[Well,] who [then] shall separate us from the love of Christ?” And then he goes on, as you will see in the text, to list potential enemies of our happiness and enemies of our security in Jesus. And once again, he returns to this matter of suffering: “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation …?” Suffering.

You know, without a theology of suffering, we have very little to say to our friends and neighbors who suffer. Surely one of the reasons that people who are really struggling with life find it difficult to come into many of our congregations is because there just seems to be a sort of overwhelming sense of “Hey, we’ve got it all together. You know, we’ve got it fixed.” So the person says, “Well, it seems to me they all have it fixed, so I daren’t let them know how unfixed I am.”

Without a theology of suffering, we have very little to say to our friends and neighbors who suffer.

Now, that doesn’t mean that we should pretend to be something we’re not, but it does argue for us being honest enough with one another to say that we do know tribulation, that we do know suffering. And when we fail to do that, then we actually make it possible for us to be regarded as just quite silly—with a kind of grin on your face that even the worst visit to the orthodontist can’t remove. Tears are part and parcel of God’s provision for us.

So, Paul does what he does, and that is he quotes the Bible. “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? … Tribulation, … distress, … persecution, … famine, … nakedness, … danger, or [the] sword?” And then he says, “No, you’ve got it there in Psalm 44. You’ve got it in the Bible: ‘For your sake, we’re being killed all the day long; we’re regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.’”

You know, we said yesterday—I did—that Romans 8:28 has the kind of potential for what we might call a “shaving mirror verse,” you know, or a little plaque at the end of your hallway: “And we know that in all things…”[32] And if you don’t have that one, then you might have Lamentations 3:23, right? Is it “Great is thy faithfulness. Your mercies are new every morning. Great is thy faithfulness.”[33] You know, there’s not one person in a thousand that has actually read Lamentations chapter 3 and considered how it is that verse 23 is such a standout verse. Because all the surrounding context of Lamentations 3 is all about getting your teeth ground and eaten by tigers and everything else. And this is an expression of life! And so Jeremiah says, “And it’s this, and it’s this, and it’s this, and it’s this, and it’s this. Yet,” he says—“yet this I call to mind.” Right? New identity, new mentality. “I don’t say this is not true, this is not happening. This is true. This is happening. But this I call to mind, and therefore, I have hope. For your mercies are new every morning. Great is your faithfulness.”[34]

But you’ll notice that it is in all these things that we’re more than conquerors. This is not flying a Gulfstream at 53,000 feet, above all the normal air traffic. This is actually flying in the clouds. This is flying in the turbulence. It is in all these things that we are more than conquerors.

Great Declarations

And that’s why his rhetorical questions are over, and he moves to his great crescendo—to move, if you like, from the law court to the Cleveland Symphony Orchestra. And he makes two great declarations.

Nothing separates us from God’s love for us, for, one, “we are more than conquerors.” The word that is used there in Greek is one of those compounded words. Only the compounded nature of it can do justice to the victory that he’s describing, which comes in the face of overwhelming odds: “more than conquerors.”

“In these things.” “In these things.” I haven’t quoted Andraé Crouch yet, so I’m just going to throw him in now, if that’s okay. He came to Scotland in the early ’70s, and we had the privilege of going to a cinema somewhere in the town. And it was quite amazing that he could have such an impact on all these funny little Scottish people, myself included. And some of you who were at Explo ’72 will remember he was there as well and remember how he was able to sing, you know,

I’ve had many tears and sorrows;
I’ve had questions for tomorrow;
There have been times when I don’t know right from wrong.
But in every situation
God gave me blessed consolation
That my trials came to only make me strong.

Through it all,
Through it all,
I’ve learned to trust in Jesus;
I’ve learned to trust in God.
Through it all,
I’ve learned to depend upon his Word.

So I thank him for the mountains,
And I thank him for the valleys,
And I thank him for the things he brought me through.
’Cause if I’d never had a problem,
I’d never know that God could solve them;
I’d never know what faith in him could do.

Through it all…[35]

That’s what he’s saying here: “In all these things … through him who loved us.”

“I am [therefore] convinced.”[36] “I’m convinced. I’m persuaded. I’m absolutely rock solid on this.” What an encouragement it must have been to the initial readers, even as it is to us today! They were facing tribulation, danger, sword. Those things were all present realities. And any uncertainty coming from the pen of Paul would have had an impact on them that was negative. Well, he’s not making it up. He’s just telling the truth: “I’m sure. I’m convinced. I’m persuaded.” It’s actually in the perfect tense: “I have become, and I remain, convinced.” “I have become, and I remain, convinced.”

“Persuaded,” I think, is a good translation: “For I[’m] sure,” “For I[’m] persuaded”[37]—in view of the process that he’s outlining here. He’s thought it out. And some of us just need to get to grips with this, don’t we? We’ve got to think it out. And as a result of thinking biblically, he is persuaded by what he knows.

He is, if you like—since I mentioned flying—he’s flying the instruments. He’s flying the instruments. The other day, when we went somewhere—goodness gracious! If they didn’t have instruments in that plane, I don’t know how we would have ever got on the ground. But the pilot’s not looking out of the window. I mean, you don’t want him to be, not when you’ve got—it’s a, you know, instrument landing system; it’s doing its best. You don’t want to be sitting up front—for a number of reasons—but you don’t want to be up there, and all of a sudden you hear someone goes, “Whoa! Whoa! Woo! Hey, hey, wait a minute!” You’re like, “No! Where did that come from? That wasn’t up there, was it?” He says, “Woo-oh!” Fly the instruments! You don’t feel it? Fly the instruments!

That’s what… “’Tis what I know of thee, my Lord and God, that fills my lips with praise, my heart with song”[38]—not “’Tis what I feel of thee, my Lord and God.” “’Tis what I know.” It’s what I know. This is what he’s saying. “I’m sure that nothing can and nothing will separate us from God’s love.”

And so he runs through a list of potential and actual adversaries. You don’t need me to work my way through them all, but we just make a comment as we draw this to a close.

Death or life: separated by life, life with all its battles, life with all kinds of benefits, life with its trials, life with its temptations; death, which, “like an ever-rolling stream, bears all its sons away.”[39] “As in Adam all die, so … in Christ shall all be made alive”[40]—comprehensive, either one or the other.

“Nor angels [or] rulers,” or “demons”[41]—the heavenly realms of spiritual benefit or spiritual wickedness, the unseen armies of darkness that have been disarmed at the cross of Christ,[42] still playing out their game, but checkmate is without question. Defeated!

The present or the future: “What are you worried about?”

“Well, I’m worried about the present.”

“Oh, well, I’m worried about the future.”

“Oh, good! Well, let’s get together and make a group, the present-and-the-future fearfuls.”

Time comes in… You know, I’ve only had a few really genius thoughts in my life. In fact, I haven’t had any genius thoughts in my life! I mean, I’ve had basic thoughts like “Junk is junk.” That’s a good one. But also, I figured it out that the future comes in at a rate of sixty seconds a minute. I mean, all you need for that is a watch.

So, you know, “How are you doing?”

“Pretty good.”

“Do you think you’ll make it for another minute?”

“Yeah, I hope so. Yeah. I’m trusting so.”

When you’re waiting for your birthday, and you’re four years old or five years old, you’re waiting for 20 percent of your life to pass. When you’re fifty waiting for your birthday, you’re waiting for 2 percent of your life to pass. The future is still coming in at the rate of sixty seconds a minute, but somehow or another, inside of us, it feels like it’s just like it was only Christmas yesterday, and apparently, it’s Christmas again tomorrow. It’s a strange sensation. It chases us. The passage of time chases us. The passage of time changes us.

One of the benefits of age is wisdom. One of the problems of age, or the hazards of age, is worry. Worry! I mean, you can’t be a grandfather till you become a grandfather. And you suddenly realize when you become a grandfather, “This is what my grandfather was on about!”—when, in the 1960s in Glasgow, he sees the emergence of the Beatles, and the Rolling Stones, and the Who, and the Troggs, and the Tremeloes, and all the rotten rest of them. And he used to say to me, “Son, son…” And he was a veteran of the First World War, the Battle of the Somme. He said, “Son, if people had walked down the main street of Glasgow when I was a boy and looked like that, they would have put them in a very special place.” And then he would say, “I don’t know what’s going to become of you. I really don’t.”

The passage of time chases us. The passage of time changes us.

Now I find myself doing the jolly same thing—not about the Beatles, but if you do the math with your grandchildren… Am I the only one that lies in his bed and goes, “Okay, if I’m seventy-three now, and there’s a new baby about to come in February, that means that by the time that person is ten years old, if they live, I will be eighty-three years old. And the one who is presently fifteen—goodness only knows how old I’m going to be then!” And then you’ve got to drive yourself completely crazy.

But you’ll never be separated from the love of Christ. You might be separated from sanity! So if you find yourself doing the whole thing—“Have you ever seen anything like this in your life? I don’t know what it’s going to be like for our grandchildren”—hey, welcome to the world! It’s actually very arrogant—as if somehow or another, we think that God has taken his hand off the controls of the universe as soon as we get out of here. It’s like he’s got us covered, but we don’t believe he’s got our kids covered or our grandchildren covered.

What happens when John MacArthur dies? What happens when this guy dies? What happens when the next guy dies? J. C. Ryle, the bishop of Liverpool, had the answer to that when he said, “Don’t worry about it for a moment, because God has yet brighter stars in his universe. And we may trust him.”[43]

Neither present nor future; neither height nor depth. (Sorry. Got a little carried away on that.) Neither height nor depth. “If I make my bed in the heavens, if I go to the depths”—Psalm 139.[44] God is sovereign over time and over space. That’s why the children, they do that song—not only “My God is so big, so strong, and so mighty,”[45] but “Jesus’ love is very wonderful.” That’s what they sing:

Jesus’ love is very wonderful, …
So high you can’t get over it,
So low you can’t get under it.[46]

See, we’ve got to teach that to our grandchildren. ’Cause the day will come when the temptation will be to believe that time and space may separate them from the love of God.

Powers: “nor powers”—the forces of the universe. “May the Force go with you.” Yeah. Yeah—the forces of darkness. “We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but … against spiritual wickedness in [the heavenly] places.”[47]

Yesterday morning, my son sent me a picture taken on a notice board as he was walking to church in Manhattan. And it was a picture of a person. It was an ill-defined picture; you couldn’t really tell the gender. And it said, “We save ourselves.” And down in small print it said, “Embrace the freedom to choose whatever sex you want.”

Loved ones, that comes from the deepest darkness. But those powers are held captive. In fact, if you think about it, were it not for the restraining grace of God, we would be living in hell. But God’s sovereign, restraining hand remains over all things.

And so he says… It’s kind of like if he had somebody writing this for him, if he had a secretary, he said, “Nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth,” and then he said, “Anything else I should put in?” And his secretary just said, “Why don’t you just put ‘nor anything else?’” And he said, “Well, that’s good! Let’s put that in.”

Now, I’m just making that up, you understand. I’m not interfering with the inspiration of Scripture. I’m just saying that if there was an interactive element in it, if he wrote it all himself—or whatever! “Nor anything else in all creation.” No loopholes! No loopholes! It’s comprehensive. Nothing can or will “separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” And since we are in Christ, there is therefore now no condemnation, and there is actually no separation.

Well, that’s enough for now.

Let me pray:

Our Father, thank you that we have the Bible. Thank you that your Word shines into the crevices and tiny parts of our lives when we’re alone, when we’re in the company of others. It convicts us. It convinces us. It turns us unreservedly to Jesus. We recognize that the work of the Evil One is to unsettle, to undo, to rob us of a sense of convinced assurance. But we thank you that our birthright in Jesus is to assure us of the things that we’ve been considering.

And so we pray that it may be in that renewed sense of an understanding of the immensity of your love towards us and of your care for us, such as we’ve just been pondering—that that may set our gaze in the right direction, that it might place our feet in the pathway of your appointing, and that it might set our hands free to love and serve others. And we ask this in Christ’s name. Amen.

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[1] Romans 8:38 (KJV).

[2] R. Hudson Pope, “Make the Book Live to Me.” Lyrics modernized.

[3] C. S. Lewis, “Is Theology Poetry?,” in The Weight of Glory (1949). Paraphrased.

[4] Philippians 1:6 (ESV).

[5] Romans 8:30 (paraphrased).

[6] Martin Luther, trans. Frederic Henry Hedge, “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God” (1529, 1853).

[7] 1 Samuel 17:28 (paraphrased).

[8] 1 Samuel 17:45–46 (paraphrased).

[9] Psalm 124:1–2 (paraphrased).

[10] Romans 8:31 (KJV).

[11] Luke 22:42 (NIV). See also Matthew 26:39; Mark 14:35–36.

[12] Stuart Townend, “How Deep the Father’s Love for Us” (1995).

[13] John Stott, The Cross of Christ, 20th anniv. ed. (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2006), 151. Paraphrased.

[14] Octavius Winslow, No Condemnation in Christ Jesus: As Unfolded in the Eighth Chapter of the Epistle to the Romans (London: John Farquhar Shaw, 1852), 367.

[15] Isaiah 53:10 (paraphrased).

[16] See 1 Timothy 6:17.

[17] Fanny Jane Crosby, “Blessed Assurance” (1873).

[18] John Murray, The Epistle to the Romans: The English Text with Introduction, Exposition and Notes, vol. 1, Chapters 1 to 8, The New International Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1959), 326.

[19] Augustus Montague Toplady, “A Debtor to Mercy Alone” (1771).

[20] Romans 8:1 (KJV).

[21] Augustus Montague Toplady, “From Whence This Fear and Unbelief?” (1772). Lyrics lightly altered.

[22] William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice, 4.1.

[23] Romans 3:23 (ESV).

[24] Charitie Lees Bancroft, “Before the Throne of God Above” (1863).

[25] See 2 Corinthians 5:19.

[26] Robert Lowry, “Christ Arose” (1874).

[27] See Romans 7:7–8.

[28] Thomas Kelly, “The Head That Once Was Crowned with Thorns” (1820).

[29] Eliza Edmunds Hewitt, “My Faith Has Found a Resting Place” (1890). Lyrics lightly altered.

[30] Romans 4:25 (ESV).

[31] Bancroft, “Before the Throne.”

[32] Romans 8:28 (NIV).

[33] Lamentations 3:23 (paraphrased).

[34] Lamentations 3:21–23 (paraphrased).

[35] Andraé Crouch, “Through It All” (1971). Lyrics lightly altered.

[36] Romans 8:38 (NIV).

[37] Romans 8:38 (KJV).

[38] Horatius Bonar, “Not What I Am, O Lord, but What Thou Art” (1861). Lyrics lightly altered.

[39] Isaac Watts, “O God, Our Help in Ages Past” (1719).

[40] 1 Corinthians 15:22 (ESV).

[41] Romans 8:38 (NIV).

[42] See Colossians 2:15.

[43] John Charles Ryle, Holiness: Its Nature, Hindrances, Difficulties, and Roots, 3rd enlarged ed. (London: William Hunt, 1887), 320. Paraphrased.

[44] Psalm 139:8 (paraphrased).

[45] Ruth Harms Calkin, “My God Is So Big” (1959).

[46] H. W. Rattle, “Jesus’ Love Is Very Wonderful.”

[47] Ephesians 6:12 (KJV).