Sometimes in the Depths of suffering, our faith might falter. We may be tempted to doubt God or His goodness. Today on Truth for Life Alastair Begg considers why the Apostle Paul was completely confident about the steadfast love of Christ. and why we can be equally convinced. or in Romans chapter eight.
Well, by the time we reach verse 37, which is essentially where we arrived this morning. Paul's rhetorical questions. Have come to an end. And he's moving to a grand finale. And in doing so, he makes these two great declarations.
He has affirmed the fact that nothing will separate us From the love of Christ. It's important for us to recognize that it is the love of Christ. not our love for Christ. But Christ's love for us. It's not uh as encouraging if it were about our love for him.
which frankly can ebb and flow. But the love of Christ towards us and for his people is an unerring love. And it is without any variableness or shadow due to change. And nothing separates us from the love of God for us. And so, having identified these things which we said this morning would challenge our happiness and challenge our security, trouble, or hardship, or persecution, famine, nakedness, danger, sword, as it is written in the Old Testament, as we read from Psalm 44: the people of God have faced death all day long, they've been regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.
He then says triumphantly, No, no, no, in all these things we are more than conquerors. Uh it he it's as if he actually invents another Greek word. He uses a word which is a compound word. He's not happy just to say we're conquerors. He declares that we are more than conquerors.
We are actually, the word he uses is the word that gives us our word hyper. We are hyper-conquerors through him who loved us. And Only this heightened word can do justice To describing the victory that is ours in and through the Lord Jesus Christ. And it is important for us to realize that He's not saying that it is because we are removed from these things or because we have been taken to a realm that is above and beyond all these things, but rather it is in all these things. Reminding us again of the fact that suffering and the experiences that are identified in these characteristics are not to be regarded as strange or as alien to the believer in the Lord Jesus Christ.
And at the risk of just repeating myself ad nauseum, I say to you again that part of the challenge that we face in our generation is in being able to articulate to our friends and neighbors an understanding of suffering and the place of suffering in the life of the believer. It is in all these things that we are more than conquerors. We are more than conquerors, not because we're very special people, not because we're very powerful people, not because we've been able to look inside of ourselves and say, you know, you really are quite a remarkably strong character after all. No, the conquering nature that we enjoy is that which is provided for us through Him who loved us. He loved us.
Paul has said in verse 8 of chapter 5: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. And when Jesus died upon the cross, he triumphed over all of the principalities and over all of the powers. And he has loved us with an everlasting love. An everlasting love. And there is no other love that is an everlasting love.
The love of A spouse. It can never be an everlasting love. The love of a parent for a child, for a friend. can never be everlasting. It will inevitably be marred or spoiled.
Curtailed. ended by death. But the love through which we conquer. Is the love of the Lord Jesus who has loved us in this everlasting way?
So he says we're more than conquerors, and then in verse 38, and I am convinced. I am convinced Paul, as the servant of God, encourages these believers in Rome. encourages them by the sound of his voice in print. As he says to them in the face of all of their struggles, experienced and anticipated. I am convinced.
And this not on the strength of rhetoric, This is not some attempt on his part to manipulate their minds or instill in them a false confidence or false courage. No. I am convinced That neither death nor life, angels, demons, present, future, powers, height, depth, anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God. His tense is the perfect tense. In some translations it reads, I am persuaded.
Which is a good translation. In other words, I am sure, I am convinced, I am persuaded. In other words, in the view of the process of his thought that he has outlined, not just in chapter 8, but throughout the whole book so far, his mind has been persuaded by the truth of who God is, the revelation of all of God in Christ, in the work of Christ. Is the basis of a convinced mind and heart. It is not an emotional surge.
He is flying the instruments. He is paying attention to all that is given to him. He is making deductions on the strength of that information and on the basis of what he knows. He then is able to affirm these things. 'Tis what What I know of thee.
My Lord and God. That fills my heart with praise, my lips with song. You see, it is knowledge. which provides the basis for being able to say In all of this, we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. How has He loved us?
Read the Gospels and you see how He has loved us. He has loved us enough to come in the humility of Bethlehem. He has loved us enough to identify with us in our sin, in His baptism. He is loved enough to stand outside the grave of Lazarus and weep. He has loved enough to sit with a woman at the well and introduce her to water whereby she will never thirst again.
He has loved us enough to agonize in Gethsemane and ask for the Father to remove the cup from him. He has loved us enough to endure unmitigated suffering in the cross, refusing even the anesthetic potion that was offered to him in order that he might enter into the depths of all of human suffering and all of our knowledge of that. Provides the basis for being able to say, I am convinced, I am persuaded. And the hymn writers have helped us, haven't they? I know not why, God's wondrous grace to me has been made known.
Nor why, unworthy as I am, he bought me for his own. But I know whom. I have believed it. And I am persuaded That he is able to keep that which I've committed unto him against that day. In the same way when we sing it is well with my soul.
I've told you already and I think we may have changed it. We probably haven't changed it. It's certainly not changed in the books. But when Spafford wrote, It is well with my soul, he did not write, you have taught me to say it is well with my soul. He wrote, You have taught me to know it is well with my soul.
We need to know that it is well.
So that we might be able to affirm that it is well. Knowledge. is strength. in Christian living. as well.
I am convinced, persuaded, I know. I'm sure. that nothing can. and nothing will separate us from God's love. What a wonderful, wonderful truth.
Nothing will separate us from God's love. Look at where He starts. We can't work our way through this in detail. You'll be glad to know, perhaps, but we'll just note them in passing. For I am convinced that neither death nor life Life With all the battles, all the benefits, all the triumphs, all the temptations.
No matter what it throws at us. It's not going to separate us from God's love. Death will not separate us from God's love. This struck me very forcibly the other evening as I was reading a poem to my wife. I'm not sure that she was as excited about it as I was, but she was very, very gracious in the way she listened.
And I had actually come to this poem by Auden, not because I remembered it from school, but because I was introduced to it in a novel that I had been reading at the time. And I found just a line from it. The novelist used a line, stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone. And I said, oh, yes. And they said so then thank thankfully we all have Google.
And or whatever you want to have. I'm sorry, I know this is not an advertisement for Google. But thankfully, you can go.
So all I did was I just googled stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone. And then this is what I got. Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone. Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone. Silence the pianos.
and with muffled drum Bring out the coffin. Let the mourners come. Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead. scribbling on the sky the message He is dead put crep bows round the white necks of the public doves, Let the traffic policeman wear black cotton gloves. He was my north.
My south. My east and west, My working week and my Sunday rest, my noon, my midnight, my talk. My song I thought that love would last forever. I was wrong. The stars are not wanted now.
Put out, every one. Pack up the moon. and dismantle the sun. Put away the auction. and sweep up the wood.
for nothing now can ever come to any good? That's a classic expression. of the separating nature of death. We'll be separated, some of us have been separated from those who are nearest and dearest to us. From the mother who gave us birth.
From a sibling. I just spoke to one of my friends this week. He came back from Germany on Wednesday. The reason he had gone to Germany is because his sibling's sister. had passed away.
He'd gone there for the funeral. I think anybody who has experienced the reality of death. understands why Arden would write as he did. Don't you remember when someone close to you died? How it just seems so wrong that anyone would ever laugh.
That anyone would make a joke about graveyards. That somehow or another the birds would even sing? and that everything would go on as usual. All of that is the reality. That's what makes this so distinctive.
We will never be separated. from the love of God in death. We never will. We will pass through the valley of the shadow of death, but we will never be separated from the love of God. If like me you wonder what this transition will mean, You must harness your mind to this.
You must anticipate death on the strength of this. That death will not, cannot separate us from God's love. That for the Christian to die is to fall asleep in the arms of Jesus and is to waken up and to discover that they're actually home. home in a way that he had never ever encountered. Discovering that which Paul writes about in First Corinthians two, that eye hasn't seen and ear hasn't heard, and neither has it entered into the heart of man, the things that God has prepared for them that love him.
I am convinced, says Paul. What a tremendous encouragement this must have been for these believers as they read this letter after the persecution of Rome began, after Nero started his dirty business, after their friends and loved ones were sent to the lions, and as they thought of the implications of the ravaging impact of the state on the lives physically of their brothers and sisters. They must have come back to Romans 8 again and again and said, you know, this has been a dreadful separation. But they're not separated from the love of God. Death or life, angels or demons.
The heavenly realms. Of spiritual benefit or of spiritual wickedness, the unseen. In the cross, the Lord Jesus has disarmed all of these things. And Paul is the one who reminds the Colossians about that when he writes to them. Colossians chapter 2, he says, When you were dead in your uncircumcision of your sinful nature, God made you alive with Christ.
And he took all these things that were against us and nailed them to the cross. And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross. He says much the same thing right around two-thirds into Ephesians chapter 1. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future. The passing of time.
Augustine says, I know what time is until somebody asks me what it is. The future comes in at the rate of sixty seconds a minute. It chases us, it changes us. The U. S.
Airways magazine this month is a very splendid magazine as it turns out, and it has a terrific review of a book on the impact of the Internet. And the amount of messages that are that are Passing all the time. Not millions, but billions. And in the article, the writer in this book is pointing out the dramatic shift that has taken place. And as a result of this, we've explained to ourselves that we now have so much more time.
But we're using up all that time. Looking to see if anybody has emailed us, or Facebooked us, or tweeted us, or freaked us, or tweaked us, or whatever there is to do. And that actually hasn't enabled us for more communication. It hasn't made it better for us to actually see each other. That there is no way that LOL comes close.
to a genuine laugh. There is no way. That are calling And half of a parenthesis. is anywhere close. to the smile From the eyes of a friend.
And time chases us and harries us. One of the benefits of age. Is wisdom One of the detriments of age. is worry It is of significance. When you find yourself saying things Not that your parents were saying, But that your grandparents were saying, When you find yourself taking the newspaper and saying, I don't know how my grandchildren are ever going to manage in this world.
There is no possibility of them being able to make it. That's what my grandfather said. By God's grace. I'm making it. My grandchildren, unless Christ returns.
We'll make it. Because neither the present Nor the future. Will separate them in Christ from God's love. God is not stopping when we pass away. There's this dreadful narcissism represented in this, isn't there?
That as long as we can make it finally to our grave, after that, you know, if God wants to go on vacation for a while, you know, so be it. But no, that's not it at all. He's our help in ages past and He is our hope for years to come. And neither height nor depth can separate us from Him. What Paul is actually doing is taking all of the notions of time and space and He's saying, listen, you are secure in Christ.
He is sovereign. Over the present, he's sovereign over the future, over death, over life, over demonic powers, over the angels. And he is sovereign. over the vastness of creation. And so our children learn to sing.
Jesus' love is very wonderful. It's so high you can't get over it. It's so wide you can't get round it. It's so deep you can't get under it. the wonderful love of Jesus.
And what we taught our children, we need to live and believe. ourselves. Neither height nor depth. Future. Nor powers.
any powers. any powers. And then Nor anything else. that's been created. Just in case you're worried that he might have slipped something by, he gives a comprehensive summary.
No loopholes. This is comprehensive. Nothing can, nothing will separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. since we are in Christ by His grace, There is now no condemnation. And there is no Separation.
I've read a lot of books on Romans 8 in the last while, or in the first part of this year. None more daunting than this book by Thomas Jacob, who was a Puritan, lived in the 17th century. I got it in the second-hand section of our bookstall here. It's really quite good. It runs to some 300 and 80 pages of pretty full text.
And what makes this book quite remarkable is that this is his work, but only on verses 1 to 4.
Now don't you wish he was your pastor? Because you wouldn't even have reached verse 2 after all this time. And some of you were saying, I think we'll be in Romans 8 for the rest of our lives. But in his introduction, this is what he says, and I want to use his introduction as my conclusion. In this book, he writes to his readers, If in the discussing of these points, and this is my sentiment as I come to the end of these as well, if in the discussing of these points I have said nothing.
but what the learned in their treatises about them have said before. Yet, however, Two things. I have done. One According to my duty. I have given my testimony.
To the great truths of God. Let it signify what he pleases. Two I hope I have. I'm sure it has been my endeavour. made some things in themselves dark and intricate, to be somewhat more plain and intelligible to weaker capacities.
And if I have done but that, though I have brought no new matter. My pains have not been ill spent. My soul's desire. Is that the professors of this age? may be well grounded in the articles of the Christian faith.
And that they may attain to a clearer insight into gospel mysteries than what as yet they have attained to. And if what is here done, shall conduce to the promoting of these most desirable things. It will be a sufficient recompense to me. for all the labour. that I've been at.
Thomas Jacob. in the seventeenth century. You're listening to Alistair Begg on Truth for Life.
Some of you know that Alistair recently released a new book about the assurance of being in Christ, and he's here with us today to tell us about it. Thanks, Bob. You may be familiar with the short video called The Man on the Middle Cross. The video inspired us to make a short book by the same name that we've prepared for you to be able to introduce others to Jesus. It is, as I say, a brief book.
It tells the stories of three people who had a life altering encounter with Jesus the woman at the well, the paralytic man, and the thief on the cross. Each of these people had a need. but didn't know that their true need was to have their sins forgiven. And the reader of the book will learn that this is a need of every person, and that Jesus forgives those who come to Him. I'd love for you to give this book to as many people as possible this holiday season.
is priced at only one dollar so that we can give it away widely. In fact, five books cost less than most Christmas cards, so you might even use the book as a Christmas card replacement. Imagine the gospel outreach we can all have this November and December. If everyone who hears this today shares just five copies. You can leave one for your mail carrier, package delivery person, leave copies behind at your favorite coffee shop, There's no end to the way we can all distribute them this holiday season.
Again, the book is called The Man on the Middle Cross. and Bob will tell you how to get a supply.
Well, actually, you can purchase as many of these little books as you need at truthforlife.org/slash middle. Or you can call us if you need more help, call 888-588-7884. Thanks for listening today. What exactly was Jesus saying when he would start his sentences with truly, truly, I say to you? Tomorrow, we begin a brand new series that takes a close look at these revealing statements from Jesus.
I hope you can join us. The Bible teaching of Alastair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life. Where the Learning is for Living.
