Message Description

Guest speaker Dr. Philip Ryken concludes the Second Message series teaching out of Romans 8 explaining the inseparable love of God.

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A few weeks ago, I was learning a little bit about some research that the Wheaton College Billy Graham Center had done on the Jesus People Movement of the 1970s. Something centered particularly in Southern California. Really a remarkable movement of the Spirit of God in that community with many young people coming to faith in Jesus Christ. It got me thinking about one of those people, in particular, a guy called Keith Green, who was a well-known Christian musician and tragically died in a plane crash when he was only 28 years old. I really liked Keith Green's music. I had heard it when I was in high school from some college students, I knew at Wheaton College. I knew how sad they were when Keith Green died. And this was one of those things, the internet is great for learning things that you missed and taking a deeper dive into something you'd like to know more about. So, I started looking at Keith Green and learning a little bit more about his life. And there are so many amazing things about it. 

He was 11 years old when he signed a five-year record deal to produce rock and roll records. He's still the youngest person ever to sign a music license with ASCAP. Unfortunately, or, maybe in the providence of God, fortunately, that career didn't take off the way that people hoped it would. Somebody else became a lot more famous than Keith Green. It's maybe another name some of you don't know, but it was Donny Osmond. He became the big thing. And that was really tough for Keith Green. In his teenage years, he was far from God. Got caught up in drugs. But his life was rescued. He came into a personal relationship with Jesus Christ and then amazing things happened in his life. 

He did become a musician. Very generously, he never charged admission for any of his public concerts. He wanted to tell people about Jesus, and he wanted them to come as much as they could. So that wasn't how he made his income. He did make income from his cassettes, as they were, back in the day. But probably not as much money as he could have made. Because in each of his cassettes, he added another cassette that you could give to a friend for free. Did that all for free. He was such a generous person. 

But what really amazed me was what he and his wife, Melody, did in their early twenties. They began taking people in that were having a hard time. They took in women coming out of prostitution, people that were caught up in drugs and wanted to get out, kids that were homeless, and young girls who were pregnant and didn't have a place to turn. They brought them into their home. They bought the home next to them. They started renting other homes in their neighborhood. 75 people at one point were living with them in what they called The Greenhouse, a place where people could grow. I was just so amazed. I was touched by that. I just said, "I love this man. I love what he was doing." 

And it also occurs to me that not many people do that kind of thing. I don't know what you were doing or expected to do in your early twenties. Probably not take in 75 people who are having a hard time in life. How does that happen? Where did that come from? I think Keith Green answered that question in one of his well-known songs. He said, as if to the Lord, "You put this love into my heart." And the results of that love changed other people's lives forever. 

And that's the second message I want to give to you this morning. I love the theme of this series Second Message. The first message of course is the gospel. It's the good news. Or as I've been reading in the brand new First Nation's translation of the New Testament, which Native American communities around the country have gathered to produce, now published by University Christian Press. They call the good news the good story. That's the Native American way to say it. It's the good story about Jesus, about the son of God, as we've been singing this morning. Leaving his home in heaven, coming down into the earth and all of the difficulty of our humanity, living a perfect life, offering his life as an atonement for sin. And then by the power of God's Spirit or the Great Spirit, as it says in this New Testament, being raised from the dead with the power and the gift of eternal life. That's the first message. 

But now if somebody asked you, what would you like to give as the second message, maybe the next thing or the second most important thing in all the Bible, that's a really tough question. That's why in this series of messages, you've been hearing a lot of different answers to that from a lot of different places in scripture. But here's the second message I wanted to give you. It's very simple. You are loved forever. This good news gospel that God has brought into the world through Jesus comes with divine love, that when it comes into your life, stays in your life from now until forever and ever. God loves you. Jesus loves you. Even after everything you've done and even despite everything you're going through, you are loved by the everlasting God. 

This is the message that Paul wanted to reinforce. Paul, the apostle, or messenger of Jesus who wrote this letter to the Romans, Christians living in Rome in the ancient world under the power of the emperor but trying to live out a faithful Christian life. It's an amazing book, the book of Romans. Some theologians have said, not a few theologians have said this. Romans chapter 8 is the best chapter in the best book in the entire world. John Calvin, for example, when he was writing about Romans, said, "Romans 8, if you can open the door to this, it will let you into the room with all the treasures, all the treasures that God has to give you," including at the end of this chapter, the great love of God for you in Jesus Christ. 

I think it's striking how the argument develops here. Paul was a very logical person. He lays things out in a very sophisticated way in his book. One of the things he does at the end of Romans chapter 8, and you heard it in the scripture reading, is he poses a lot of questions. If you've been wondering, as you've been starting to look at the Bible, where are the frequently asked questions? Well, a lot of them are here at the end of Romans chapter 8. If God is for us, who can be against us? That's a question. Will God graciously give us all things? That's a question. Who is going to bring any charge against us? That's a question. Paul works through these questions. In a way, all of them, rhetorical questions, some of which he doesn't answer. He leaves it for you to figure out. Some of which he does answer. And that's true of this climactic question in verse 35. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? 

Well, spoiler alert. No one, nothing. That's the point that Paul is getting to. But it's worth seeing a little bit how he makes that point. What you see in verse 35 is him extending that semi-rhetorical question and making it a kind of seven-part question, who shall separate us from the love of Christ? And then he raises seven different possibilities. He's going to give some answers to this later on. But he goes through quite a list of things that you might think would separate you from the love of God, which, by the way, is a message that we really need. 

Because many of us, maybe all of us, sometimes doubt whether God really does love us. I mean, given all the difficult things you're going through, it might be tempting to say, "Does God really love? I mean, if God really loved me, he wouldn't be putting me through all of this." That's tempting to say. Or sometimes we're so weighed down by guilt, by the things we did that we're ashamed of, like some of the things we were confessing earlier in this worship service or some of the things we should have done that we never did. We sometimes wonder can God really love someone like me. 

Keith Green wondered about that too. That same song where he gave that strong testimony, "Lord, you put this love into my heart," that's not how the song begins. It begins like this. It begins, "I find it hard to believe that someone like you cares for me." Well, Paul is here to give great assurance to those of us who sometimes doubt the love of God for us. And so, he asks this rhetorical question. I ask it again. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? And then he goes on to give a list of some of the things that might separate us from the love of Christ. 

One famous preacher from the fourth century, John Chrysostom, who had the, if you've heard of the famous Hagia Sophia, the original building for that, that was the place where he preached, in what is now Istanbul. He's famous all over the world for his preaching. He came to this verse, Romans 8:35. And he said, "Now, here is a verse that covers oceans of dangers and reveals to us all the evils which people encounter in life." And it's quite a list. Trouble, hardship, persecution. It makes me think of some of the great persecution that the people of God are going through in the world today. 

I was so interested recently to read a narrative account of the 21 martyrs, those young men who were killed with the sword, beheaded, on the shores of Liberia just a couple of years ago. Or think of the kidnapping in Haiti. What was that two weeks ago? 17 missionaries kidnapped by a gang in Haiti. I think of some of the Wheaton students I know who are facing this kind of danger, Wheaton alumni anyway. One leading pastor at perhaps the largest evangelical church in Beijing shared with me what it was like for him as a young husband, father of two children, to look out the window of their apartment and to see across the street a police officer undercover, always one or another waiting for them. Follow his wife to the grocery store. Follow him to meet with somebody from the church. Not uncommon for some of the leaders of that church to be put in prison for a time as a way of intimidation. 

It's true what Paul goes on to say in verse 36 about the church and the world. "For your sake, we face death all day long. We are considered as sheep to be slaughtered." These are real hardships that affect real people, real people of God in the world today. And Paul goes on in his list. He talks about famine and nakedness. That causes me to think of the many refugees in the world, 60 million people, more probably than any other time in human history are on the move without a home, without a place to be confident in, sometimes without the food that they need or other daily necessities. These are the kinds of things that if you go through them, and if people you love go through them, or people you know about go through them, might cause you to doubt whether God really is a God of love. And Paul goes on to add to his list, danger and then a sword. Things that are life-threatening, even up to the point of martyrdom. 

Now, maybe you're not going through quite as much trouble as all that. I think part of Paul's purpose here is to give us worst-case scenarios. And if the love of God will stay with you even through things like this, then the love of God is going to stay with you even through the things that you're going through. We had a beautiful testimony of that on our campus this week. Denise Daniels, who is our Professor of Entrepreneurship, gave her testimony in the chapel of how hard it was for her during COVID to come to our campus from Seattle and not really know anybody and not have a great chance to get to know her colleagues who were teaching remotely last year. And all of that was pretty difficult. But what was really difficult is she discovered she had a life-threatening heart condition and needed open-heart surgery. She came out of that surgery and was in great distress. They had her in the ICU. She was having trouble breathing. They had to hook her up to a ventilator and she was so fearful in those moments. It was all that she could do just to breathe. 

But in that moment of hardship, God was with her in his love. And what she did was this. As she would take her breath in, she would say, "Lord, fill me with your Spirit." And then as she breathed out, she would say, "Take away my fear, fill me with your Spirit, take away my fear." And so, at that moment, she was kept and held secure in the love of God so that she could give her testimony of what it was like for her to be in danger, trouble, and going through hardship. This is part of my reason for wanting to strengthen you in the love of God this morning. 

And so, whatever you're going through in life right now, whatever hardship you are facing in life, work, family, or finance, whatever it is, that you too would know the great love of God for you in that situation. And take Paul's word for it. Because he had been through all of this. In another place, Paul wrote about the things... actually in more than one place. You can find it in a couple of places in his letters. He just kind of goes through all the troubles that he had faced. 

And it is quite a list. Beaten, stoned, left for dead, shipwrecked three times. And he had to swim for his life. He was robbed. He was in danger from his own Jewish countryman. He was in danger from non-Jews who were hostile to Jews. He was in danger in urban communities where he was beaten and left for dead. He was in danger when he went out into the wilderness. He talks all about all the hardships, troubles. I mean, everything he writes about here, was all personal experience. It wasn't theoretical. It was practical. It was real. It wasn't just real for Paul. It was real for Christians in Rome as well. 

It's worth reflecting on how significant these words must have been. Because some of these, the Romans that received this letter and heard it read in their church, were the ones that were torched in the Gardens of Nero, put to death under imperial persecution. But they were strengthened beforehand by this great assurance from the beloved Apostle Paul of the inseparable love of God in Jesus Christ. Paul doesn't just leave this question rhetorical here in Romans chapter 8. He answers the question. If you want to see what the answer is, it's there at the beginning of verse 37. Can anything separate us from the love of Christ? Verse 37. No, nothing can. 

In fact, he goes on in that verse to do something a bit remarkable, which he did more than once. He invented a new word. He wanted to say that we're able to really conquer these troubles in life because of the love of God that is for us. And so, he said we're more than conquerors. We're super conquerors. We're not just champions. We're the champions of the champions. That's the idea of this verse. It is a strong affirmation of God's love for us in Jesus Christ. 

Another thing I find so interesting about how Paul structures his argument in response here, how he puts the question up and then answers it, is the tremendous sense of energy. It's as if the pace accelerates. Paul just wants to emphasize and emphasize again what God has done for us in Jesus Christ. Part of the reason I have that sense of energy is from my experience of hearing children in our church in Philadelphia recite this chapter. 

We had a Bible memory program for children from two up through sixth grade. And the sixth graders in the spring would memorize the entirety of Romans chapter 8. And then they would publicly recite it before the church. And they usually began really strong. I mean, they knew the first verses cold. They did pretty well halfway through. They're getting up at verse 25. They're doing pretty well. Then it would usually falter a little bit and you could kind of tell which were the three or four that really knew it well and the others were trying to catch up and keep up. But then by the time they got to the end, they all knew these last verses. 

"I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor death." Can you sense the excitement and sense of momentum? Paul wants to carry this through to a climactic conclusion, making his declaration of the love of God for us in Jesus Christ. And I think it is so personal for the Apostle Paul. He's been writing eight chapters of really rich, dense, difficult sometimes, theology. And this is the first time in the epistle that he puts himself personally into the argument. "I am convinced," he says at the beginning of verse 38. He wants to underscore it. And in fact, uses a tense of the verb that indicates not just, "I was convinced, or I am convinced," but "once and for always this has been, it is, and it will be my settled view of the love of God for us in Jesus." I want you to have this same assurance and sense of confidence in the love of God. 

One other early Christian who knew this chapter well and took great confidence from it was Cyprian, the ancient Bishop of Carthage. He said, "Nothing can snatch away those who are clinging to Christ's body and blood. Never at any time has his help failed his believers." And Cyprian went to his death with that confidence because he was under the persecutions of the emperor Valerian. And when he was sentenced to die, Cyprian said... I don't know what you would say if you were sentenced to die. He said, "Thanks be to God." Because he believed this was God's purpose for his life, an opportunity for him to glorify God. And he knew with absolute certainty nothing could separate him from God's love. 

Paul wants us to have that same confidence. And so, he goes through this list. He's giving his answer to his rhetorical question. And now he tells us, "I am convinced that none of these things..." and he lists 10 of them, "... can separate us from the love of God in Jesus Christ." And some of them come in pairs, like life and death, and height and depth. What an English professor would call “merism”, two words that, put them together, cover everything. Life and death. There's nothing outside of that. Present and future. That's all the time that you can think of. Paul is wanting to be very comprehensive here in his assurance of God's love for us. 

He starts with death. Death separates a lot of things. It separates the body from the soul. It separates one beloved family member from another. When the time comes for us, it will separate us from this earthly life, but it will not separate us from the love of God. Because in Jesus Christ, God has triumphed over death. That's the whole point of the resurrection that we've been singing about this morning, that Jesus has triumphed over the grave, that he has taken the last enemy, death, that's what the Bible calls it, death is the last enemy, and with all the other enemies of God, has put it under His feet. Scripture says that Jesus abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel. There is the death of death in the death of Jesus. So that now for us who believe in Jesus Christ, death doesn't separate us from God. It brings us into His very presence. 

A remarkable testimony of someone who believed so strongly in the love of God even through death comes from young Margaret Wilson. The year was 1685. She was growing up in Scotland, just 18 years old at the time. She had been taken captive by the government because she refused to give her affirmation to the claim that the king of England was the head of the church. She said, "I can't do that. I'm a believer in Jesus. Jesus is the head of the church. It's not the king of England." So, Margaret, with another Christian woman also known as Margaret, the two of them were sentenced to death by drowning. They were taken in Scotland out into the Solway Firth. They were chained to wooden stakes in advance of the rising tide. 

It was cruel how it was done. The older Margaret was put just a little farther out from shore. So, the younger Margaret would see her older sister in Christ perish. That would give her more time to renounce Jesus and say what the government wanted her to say. But instead of renouncing Jesus, do you know what young Margaret Wilson did in her dying moments? She recited Romans 8, the Bible chapter she had committed to memory, including these climactic words. I am convinced that death cannot separate me from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus. 

That's a strong argument. That's a good place for Paul to start his answer. But he goes on from death to life. And at first, that may seem strange. It seems obvious to wonder whether death could separate you from the love of God. But what about life? How would life separate you from the love of God? Well, maybe if your life was full of sorrow, it would. Sorrow, pain, and difficulty. Those things can drive us very far from God or a sense of His love. 

I was so blessed by the testimony that Todd Beamer's father gave on the campus of Wheaton College around September 11th, 2002. It was a year after Todd had given his life, I would say, in the plane that crashed in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, not too far from here. And through his tears, Todd's father talked about what that loss had meant to their family. But he also said this, that he was convinced that life, and he referred to Romans chapter 8, that life without his son in the world could not, would not separate him from the love of Jesus. Whatever sorrows, difficulties, pains we go through in life, may separate us from many things that we love, but not from the love of God himself. 

Well, Paul's off to a great start with life and death. He goes on to talk about angels and demons, powers in the supernatural realm, which are nothing to kid around about, that's for sure. Something maybe to be reminded of on Halloween. But also, nothing to be afraid of. That's something to be reminded of on Halloween as well. These supernatural powers that stand against God will be in the end defeated and they are powerless to separate us from the love of God in Christ. Things present. Paul says whatever's happening now in the world and in our own lives, that won't separate us from the love of God. 

Things in the future, the things that we are worried about and fearful of. And for some of us, that's a huge temptation. We spend more time thinking about all the things that might go wrong and might happen that we don't want to see happen than we do actually about trusting God for what He has for us today. And those anxieties perhaps have been increased in this COVID time when there seems to be rampant anxiety in our culture. We certainly see it on college and university campuses. But whatever the future may bring and however worried we may be tempted to be about it, whatever happens, cannot separate us from the love of God. His affections will remain constant for us throughout all eternity. Nothing in the future can ever change that, who God is and who He is in His love towards us. So much for time. 

What about space? It's not just present and future. It's height and depth. Paul, I think, is saying something pretty similar to what King David said in Psalm 139 when he posed the question, "Where can I go from God's presence? Is there anywhere I can go, anywhere I can flee that would be outside of God's reach? No, because if I went up to heaven, God would surely be there. And even if I made my bed in the very depths of death itself, God is also there. He is in every place." 

I had a little opportunity myself to put faith in God's presence in every place into practice this week because I found myself in a little place I didn't want to be. I had an MRI this week and I was a little anxious about it, to tell you the truth. I had had another MRI. And at the end of that MRI, I had been pretty anxious about the confinement. I'm not going to describe it, because if you have to have an MRI, I don't want you to be anxious about it. But when they asked me the question, getting ready for this procedure, they said, "Do you ever get claustrophobia?" And I'm like, "Maybe. Maybe I do. This could be a little tough for me." 

I went to the appointment. My wife was with me. She was reassuring me. She said, "Remember, last time I was able to go in with you and just be in there with you and kind of put my hand on you and it's going to be alright." I'm like, "Yeah, that makes me feel better. You can be in there with me." Then the technician said, "No, she can't be in there with you." That was a little dismaying. I got in there and looked at the machine. It was different than the last one I had and scarier looking. 

But as I went into that test and was in a very small place, I was able to say, "Lord, you're here. Lord, help me. I know you're here. I know you're here in this little place." And that is true of any place where you find yourself. Any circumstance or place in the world, that is a place where you can be confident of God's loving presence for you. And I think, by the time you get to this point in the verse, Paul has said pretty much everything. I can't really think of anything that's not included in life and death, present and future, height and depth, the supernatural realm as well as the natural realm. But just in case he's missed anything, Paul gives us a kind of “D”, all of the above, at the end of this verse. He says, "Not this, not that, nor anything else in all creation." 

And it's a good reassurance. Because, as a pastor, I know that even sometimes, even when the people of God have the promises of God in the Bible, they start thinking about a way that it doesn't really fit for them. It doesn't apply to them. Like it doesn't quite speak to their situation. Paul will have none of that. He says, "Anything else, anything you can think of, there is nothing that will ever separate you from the love of God in Jesus Christ." That assurance gives such great joy to life and becomes infectious in the lives of others. 

I have a friend at Wheaton College, no longer working at the college, but she's still a friend. She happened to notice a woman in her neighborhood in downtown Wheaton. Noticed that the woman appeared to be Asian. And she was interested in that. She hadn't seen her before. She wondered what country she was from because my friend had served in missions for many years in Indonesia. And she talked to the woman. Turned out the woman was from China. And my friend asked her if she wanted to study the Bible and the Chinese woman was interested in that. Nobody had ever offered to study the Bible with her before. And so, she was invited to a very early morning women's Bible study. And she was attending. 

But some weeks later she came to my friend and just asked the question, "Does anybody ever study the Bible later in the day, or is it only early in the morning because this is really tough for me." So, my friend connected her with an evening Bible study. That was better. And what she'll never forget is what it was like for her to be in the parking lot after school, waiting to pick up her kids, and to see this Chinese woman starting to walk towards her and then picking up the pace a little bit. And there was such a look of joy on her face, my friend knew right away what had happened. She knew God had put His love into that woman's heart. And He did it in a remarkable way. 

At the Bible study the evening before, they'd been working through the gospels. They came to that place where Jesus commands his disciples to love their enemies. As soon as she heard that, the Chinese woman knew, that's right. People should love their enemies. They don't, but they should. The world would be a better place if they did. And she also had a personal recognition. "I could never do that. I don't have that kind of love in my life that I could love my enemy." She started thinking about the people that fell into that category for her. She knew she needed God's love, God's forgiveness, something more powerful than anything that could ever come from her. And she opened her life to it that evening. Spent the rest of the night reading through the Bible until that moment when she could tell her friend what had happened in her life. 

I have another friend who had a pretty similar experience in a way, in a very strange place. It happened at the morgue in one of the Philadelphia hospitals. He was deeply discouraged. He just really had a lot of things going against him in life. He was far from God and went down to the morgue in his discouragement. He was a little surprised to see somebody else there. People don't usually linger in the morgue. But there was another hospital worker down there and the man looked at him and he could just tell my friend was in trouble just from the look on his face. And he said something very simple and very bold. He said, "You need Jesus." 

And when my friend heard that, he instantly resonated with that. "I do need Jesus. Tell me more. That is exactly what I need in my life." He gave his life to Jesus. But then there was a big problem he had. He had to go home and tell his wife about it. She didn't want anything more to do with God than he had ever wanted to do with God. He wasn't sure what to do. So, he did the most amazing thing. Nobody told him to do this, I guess, just the Holy Spirit in his life. He just said, "I'm going to go home and I'm going to start loving her with this love that I now have." 

And I don't need to tell you what happened in her life. Because when someone loves you with the love of Jesus and particularly when a husband truly loves his wife with the love of Jesus, it is so powerful in her life. It was transforming. And she, not long after that, gave her life to Jesus as well. The love of God, when it comes into your life, is a life-changer. It is a world-changer because that doesn't just stop with you. It spills over into the lives of others. 

I wonder this morning; do you have this love in your heart? If you don't, Jesus wants to give it to you. And if you do, God wants you to be so certain and sure of that love that you can face anything in the world and that love will be so powerfully at work in you that it will just spill over into the lives of others. You are loved forever for this beautiful purpose. 

Lord, we do believe the promise of scripture, the argument of the Apostle Paul, that nothing can separate us from your great love. Maybe some here this morning are finding it really hard to believe. Lord, touch them by your Spirit through the words of your truth. Touch us all by your Spirit through the words of your truth so that we may live with greater assurance of your love for us in Jesus and live with a greater love of Jesus for the world around us. It's in His name that we pray. Amen.