The Promise of Victory: Romans 8:31-39

Well, the sermon text this morning comes from the book of Romans, chapter 8, verses 31 through 39.

Romans 8:31–39

You'll find it, of course, printed uh in your hands in your bulletin.

Uh but if you want to look at a Pew Bible, it's on page 888 in the Bible in front of the seat in front of you.

Um APC, since last fall, we've been setting aside one Sunday each month to consider a promise of God.

Uh, this Sunday will be the final sermon in that series.

We'll consider Romans 8, verses 31 through 39, and the promise of victory.

Romans 8:31–39

Hear now the word of God.

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 we 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 is interceding, who is indeed 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 are being killed all the day long.

We are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.

No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.

For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor death, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus, our Lord.

This is the reading of God's perfect powerful and holy word.

Let's ask the Spirit's help as we consider his word this morning.

Let's pray.

But we ask this day, by your power, that you would clear those things aside to help us to see the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ, to feel this great intensity and assurance of His love and all the gladness and joy that results from it.

Holy Spirit, we ask that you would open our ears, open our eyes.

Would you make us teachable?

We ask this confidently because we pray in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Well, as we've done the series over the past year, we've looked around at different portions of the scriptures, and especially for the book of Romans, this chapter eight, this great promise in chapter eight is really kind of the emotional crescendo of the book.

But it's really built upon all the chapters preceding to that and the doctrine and the truths that the Apostle Paul has been laiding out.

So this morning, what I want to do is we're gonna consider the passage in depth.

But what I want to do actually before that is actually uh step back and actually just briefly survey the book of Romans.

I'd like for you to really capture the logical progression of the truth of the Apostles, Paul's argument in the book.

And we're gonna start with that first.

So we're gonna really do three things this morning.

We're gonna look first at the logic and the progression of the doctrine in the book of Romans.

Secondly, we're gonna then reach come into Romans 8 and look at this great emotional crescendo that's really based around these questions and these great answers.

That's gonna be verses 31 through 37.

And then thirdly and lastly, we're gonna look at the promise, which is found in verses 38 through 39.

So the logic, the questions, the promise.

And my goal is really twofold.

My first goal is that if you are uh believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, that you would enter emotionally into this passage, that you would really feel that the joy and the cheerfulness that it's meant to impart to your heart because of the assurance of God's love for you.

Secondly, my goal is that if you are spiritually seeking, if you're really not unsure what you believe about these truths that we're gonna present this morning, my goal is that you would really see the distinction between how our culture sometimes talks about God's love and how the Bible talks about it.

Uh when a culture speaks about the love of God, it actually means something very different than what we're gonna see this morning in the Bible.

And I just want you to see that contrast.

So let's uh let's consider our passage.

Uh, it begins uh with this verse here in verse 31.

He says, What shall we say to these things?

And that verse uh the question really links back to the preceding uh paragraph, but it actually really roots itself back in the whole of the book of Romans.

And so, if we could, we're just gonna take a second and just survey the book of Romans, whether you're familiar with it or under or not familiar with it, it is it is a great theological treatise, the great theological treatise of the New Testament.

Romans 1 begins with the doctrine of God, that God is our creator, God is our sustainer, God deserves our worship and our gratitude.

And then in chapter 2 and chapter 3, that really is what we call the doctrine of man and our humanity.

And in pride, humanity, rather than worshiping God and giving him the glory that he rightly deserves, worships idols.

These are good things that become ultimate things.

It's always some part of creation which we put at the center of our lives rather than our creator.

It's God's benefits rather than the benefactor himself.

And it's always a good thing, like family or nation, career, money.

Even religion and morality can become itself an idol.

Now, did you know that you and I could be very religious, moral, and upright, but it really be a reflective reflection of our own pride and not that of worship towards Almighty God?

These idols which we worship and put at the center of our lives, rather than God, make these great promises.

They promise comfort and ease, power and prominence, significance and security.

But they never keep their promises.

They always end up controlling us, driving our lives, becoming the momentum of our lives.

Really, the Bible says they enslave us.

But worse of all, they violate God's law.

God's law that we should love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength.

We should love him foremost and not bow down to idols.

They violate God's law, they violate God's righteousness.

And here, what I'm gonna say next, I know it will be a challenge for many of you here.

You'll find what I'm gonna say next really difficult, but if you would just hear me out.

Uh, in Romans 2 and 3, the the worst part about idolatry is that they make us objects of God's holy wrath.

They bring us into condemnation and into damnation.

And that's a very when you understand the doctrine of God and the doctrine of man, you're then ready for the next doctrine, which is the doctrine of Jesus' righteousness accounted to us, what we call the doctrine of justification.

In chapters 3 through 5, there's this great exposition of how we come to God as needy sinners.

Jesus not only takes our sin, but he gives us his perfect keeping of the law, his perfect righteousness imputed, accounted, reckoned to us.

Many theologians say that the theological core of the entire book of Romans, all 16 chapters, is in chapter 3, in these verses.

He writes, all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

And that means we've exchanged the glory and the worship for the true God, for these smaller things, these idols that are at the center of our life.

All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and are justified.

That is made legally righteous before holy God by his grace, it's unmerited mercy, as a gift.

And to feel the weight of that.

In all the other religious systems of the world, right, you give to God a record of your righteousness.

The gospel declares that it's the exact opposite in truth, that God gives you a record of his perfect righteousness to the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, that Christ Jesus came and fully satisfied the law.

He fully kept the Ten Commandments, He fully loved the Father, fully loved his neighbor.

And when you are joined to him by faith, he doesn't just remove the guilt of your sin, but he gives you his perfect fulfillment of the law, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood to receive by faith.

That's not a word that we hear a lot, it is a technical word.

And it really links back to that whole doctrine that we've said that we are rightfully, because we have rejected God, object of his wrath.

The word propitiation means that Jesus at the cross, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

Bears the wrath sinners deserve.

He assuages and pacifies the wrath that we rightly deserve.

And this is uh the great wonder.

You can already feel the weight of this as the apostle begins to build, this momentum of the doctrines begin to outline in the book of Romans.

When we look at the doctrine of God, the doctrine of man, the doctrine of justification, the apostle Paul then begins to anticipate objections.

And the first objection is you say, wait a second here.

If you tell people that they are 100% righteous before Almighty God on the basis of what Jesus Christ has done, right?

They have nothing to gain, nothing to lose.

Why on earth would people live a moral life?

If anything, if our sin has just proven to show God's mercy and grace, will we not sin more that grace may abound?

And the Apostle Paul then in chapters 6 and 7 talks about how we are practically transformed day to day into the image of Jesus Christ.

This is the doctrine of sanctification.

And the answer that he gives is that when you see your sin and your need for Christ and you believe in him, you are joined to Christ, you are united to Christ by faith, by his Holy Spirit, and you're actually united to him, and this is a lot to get your head around, but this is the argument, in his death and resurrection.

That is, at 33 AD, when the Son of God was crucified outside the synodity, outside the city, when he died as a penalty for our sin, you died with him, the old you, the sinful you.

And when he rose again three days later, you rose in him.

And the true you, the real you, the eternal you, is in Christ Jesus.

And he is present in you by his Holy Spirit, and he is changing you from the inside out to make you into the person that he's created you to be.

He's restoring the image of God, he's rehumanizing you.

And of course, you always see this when someone, their life can be tied up in all these types of addictions and idolatries.

They come to the gospel, they're freed by the blood of Christ, and what they desire, what they want, actually begins to change.

It's so fun when you see somebody come to Christ and the older things which used to entertain them, they suddenly are very boring.

Right?

And the life of living for God, knowing God, serving God, suddenly becomes riveting and exciting.

You say, What's happening there?

That is the fruit of union with Christ.

You're actually beginning to see Christ in them.

Christ shine through them.

The doctrine of God, the doctrine of man, justification, sanctification, and then leading into chapter 8 is the great doctrine of our adoption.

You did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the spirit of adoption as sons by whom we cry, Abba Father.

It is outside of Christ, we are opposed to God.

We're enemies of God.

But in Christ, we're not just merely citizens, not merely just associates, we are beloved children with all the rights of the inheritance that is ours in Christ.

And if you can feel all this, if you can feel how the first eight chapters of Roman have been building, uh, and the the logic of the reasoning of how he's explained ourselves and God and what God has done in Christ, you're ready for the emotional crescendo of chapter eight.

But before I go there, uh I just want to park it here for just a second, because uh even as I preach these things, I I know that our uh many in our society are deeply uh troubled by them.

We have friends, we have family members that don't just reject these ideas uh but really find them offensive.

And all types of news magazines, I like listening to podcasts.

Uh, there's really uh an aversion to this idea of a God who is uh holy and who judges, who justifies or condemns.

And the language of our culture is really God's love is not like this, right?

It's not a holy judging love that comes, that needs to be propitiated.

God's love is unconditional and universal.

You know, you are, after all, not a perfect person, but a good person.

And God loves you just the way that you are.

And that's the rhetoric of our culture.

And while you know I'm sympathetic to that because my friends talk to me in that language, you know, they really have a desire of real humanity for other people, but I'm unsympathetic at another level because it empties God's weight, God's love of all its weight and all its costliness.

It empties God's love of its power to truly move us.

Um think of it like this if you're 25 years old and say you live in an apartment and you've got the typical responsibilities of a 25-year-old, you know, you've got your car debt, and you've got maybe student loans, and maybe some credit card debt, and you're figuring out life, and uh you decide to travel and leave.

And you have a neighbor that you really love and you trust that's a friend of yours, and you say, Hey, while I'm out of town, would you get my mail?

And you go on your trip, you come back, your neighbor comes over, brings your mail, and just said, Hey, I just the neighbor says to you, you know, hey, as is a friend, I just wanted to bless you.

And so I hope you don't mind, but I actually opened up your mail, and whenever I found a bill, I paid it.

Just to be just to be a friend.

And you would say, well, okay, it might have been good to know that ahead of time.

I don't know, I feel kind of weird about you opening my mail.

But what bills did you pay?

I mean, did you pay my cell phone bill?

My electrical bill?

What if the person paid off your car loan?

What if they paid off your student debt?

What if they paid off your credit card?

What if they did all of that?

That would be completely different.

You would get over your fence pretty quick of them opening your mail.

I mean, imagine how your heart would be moved in gratitude towards this person.

And you see, when our culture talks about the love of God, it makes it like paying an electric bill or a cell phone bill.

When Scripture says, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, it's the greater debts.

It's the debts that you can't carry, it's the debt that's building interest and that's swallowing you up.

That's the debt which Christ came to pay and is fully discharged, fully satisfied.

It is finished.

My goal is that you would see that this morning.

And whether you agree or disagree, do you see how different it is, how the Bible talks about the love of God versus our culture?

Well, if you see that, you're ready for the emotional crescendo.

And the apostle asked five questions to lead us into this great emotional height.

Uh, here I'm actually, this is all kind of preview for our passage.

Here I'm gonna go through verse by verse Romans 8, 31 through 39.

He says, What then shall we say to these things?

If God is for us, right?

If he's shown us the caliber and quality of his love, man, who on earth could be against us?

Have you had someone critical in your life, key person in your life, who's really been for you?

And it's made all the difference.

Uh, in our church family several months ago, a gentleman shared with me how he's in the military, and early in his career, he went to kind of a very critical training class, which was really gonna make or break his career.

And he really had a hard time with it.

Uh the training was very physically demanding, uh very uh demanding in the classrooms, and actually his instructors, he was in part of a class, his instructors got together to actually say, hey, who's not gonna pass this class?

Who do we need to send home?

And who are we gonna pass?

And his name came up as somebody to kind of, and he said, but one of the instructors in that group said, Hey, I've got this guy.

Uh I'm for this guy.

I'm gonna make sure that he passes.

And this instructor really invested himself in the member of our church, got him through the program, helped him to graduate, help him to get on to the next thing.

And this this member of our church says, all these years ago, that was what a critical thing to have somebody at that point for you.

Where do you need to believe that the Lord Jesus Christ, the King of glory, is for you?

You know, He's got you.

Uh He looks upon you with affection and with power.

What 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?

And you see the argument from lesser to greater, he's given us his mightiest gift.

He will not withhold any of the lesser gifts, both temporal and eternal.

We are heirs truly of 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 is indeed interceding for us.

The Apostle Paul was sharply criticized and condemned in his day.

But it's clear from the different texts of the New Testament that the accusation for him wasn't just external, it was also internal.

And I think indeed the sharpest charges we receive, the most persistent condemnation, doesn't come from without, but it comes from within.

In our church tradition, two generations ago, um, there was a leading kind of thinker in our denomination named Francis Schaefer.

Many of you have heard of him, maybe read some of his books.

Well, in the 1950s, um, he went to college here in Virginia, went to a seminary.

He was really troubled by different things that were happening in the church, and he was sharply critical in a public way of many of the leaders of his time.

In a way that uh kind of a headstrong, you know, very gifted, very bright, but in some ways maybe self-righteous, you know, 20-year-old male can be.

And uh he later ended up uh leaving the United States, moving to Switzerland, but he began to be very deeply troubled by the way that he had treated people years ago.

And in his 30s and 40s, he began to write letters.

Write letters to all the people years ago in Virginia and in Philadelphia that he had criticized, apologizing.

Just saying, hey, I really violated the most simple command, the command of love, when I said this to you, when I when I wrote this, when I went on record to criticize you in this way, he just came back and just in repentance before God and before man.

But Francis Schaeffer later said he would have a bad conscience.

Even after he repented before God and before man, he felt like his conscience would sometimes jump on him in condemnation, like a like a dog would jump up on you.

And what do you do when your conscience jumps on you?

Well, he would remind himself that Jesus Christ atoned for all his sin at the cross through his resurrection, securing Schaefer's righteousness, and that Jesus presently intercedes.

And just to take a second to bear down on what it means that Jesus intercedes, we often think of, oh, Jesus is at the right hand of the Father presently, and when I sin, he cries out for my mercy, he cries out for God to show me grace.

When really Jesus' intercession is the exact opposite of that.

Jesus is our advocate, he's our eternity, and his intercession is that justice has been fully vindicated through his own atoning death.

He is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

Justice has been fully satisfied.

The requirements of the law, both active and passive, have been fulfilled by the Savior.

It would be unjust, it would be unrighteous for God to condemn us.

This is what the scriptures say.

If we confess our sin, he is faithful and just.

And do you see that no sin has to be paid for twice?

When Christ intercedes for you, when Christ intercedes for Francis Schaefer, he does it on the basis of having fully satisfying all that the Father requires.

Bearing the penalty of the law and breaking it at the cross with an actively fulfilling all its commands.

And so you have an attorney before you that doesn't cry out for mercy, you have an attorney before you that cries out for justice.

And then in verse 35, who shall separate us from the love of Christ?

Shall tribulation or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?

The Apostle Paul experienced all these things.

Tribulation derailed Paul's plans.

They damaged his health.

They put pressure on his friendships.

They undermined churches.

The Apostle Paul was appointed a hard road, a difficult task, and yet all throughout his life, just as we see in this text, he had a deep sense that he was the Father's beloved.

And if I can ask you, who there in this verse is Paul emulating?

Who knew from day one that he was the Father's beloved and yet was appointed, commissioned for the most difficult task?

Don't you see the Apostle Paul here in these verses is really emulating the Lord Jesus Christ and the pattern of the gospel?

And the apostle is saying, I look at the sufferings of Christ and how what God accomplished through them, and that Jesus was the Father's beloved, and I look at myself the same way.

The tribulations, the distresses, the persecutions, the famines, just as Christ's sufferings were purpose and intentional for God's redemptive aims, so they are also in my life.

And even Paul's career, in a sense, getting derailed and put into prison.

What did it end up doing?

Well, it ended up creating a lot of our New Testament with our prison epistles.

Constant times he was derailed and new churches were started where he was redirected.

And this difficulty of life isn't just for Paul, it's throughout redemptive history.

He quotes Psalm 44, as it is written, For your sake, we are being killed all the day long.

We are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.

And he says, and that's in Psalm 44, the psalmist is having a very honest point, a lowness emotionally.

And the psalmist later corrects himself in the psalm.

And the Apostle Paul corrects our hearts as well.

No, in all these things, we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.

Each Tuesday morning, uh we plan worship in Pastor Tom's office.

Uh and Pastor Tom has this framed picture on his shelf that says these words, not somehow, not somehow, but triumphantly.

How are we gonna persevere?

How are we gonna get through it?

Well, we'll just have to muddle through.

No, no, no, no, no.

We are more than conquerors through him who loved us.

God's love will bring victory over every trouble, every trial, every loss, every sin, over death, Satan's tyranny.

And he will use afflictions for his sovereign purpose.

And you can hear the apostle's gladness.

You can hear his joy.

Putting all this back together, you can see the logical progression of the book of Romans.

You can see uh the questions and the arguments made, and this prepares us for the great promise.

This is the final two verses of the text.

He says, For I am sure you could translate it, I am convinced, I am persuaded, I am certain that neither death nor life, whatever happens to me, whether things go well, whether things don't go quite as well.

Neither angels nor rulers, right?

And all the principalities and the great movements and things happening in the Roman Empire of the day, nor thing, 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.

Separate me, separate you from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

And uh and this is the great promise.

Um at this uh time of year, as we were just talking about, um uh Rob was praying for our students who are going back to school.

We certainly have our college students returning.

We'll soon have all of our middle schoolers and high schoolers returning.

Uh, you're gonna go back to some of the homeschool co-ops or public schools or private schools, wherever you're going.

For me, this time of year, as I was coming up the ranks, was always a time of great uh nervousness for me.

Um I remember the the the night that I the day before I started middle school, had a lot of social anxiety, new school, new material to learn, new teachers.

Uh the night before I started middle school, I was actually awake all night with fear, just sitting in my bed, just really scared.

And I went to the first day of sixth grade and I was not tired because I was so like anxious and nervous.

Uh and hopefully our students don't feel that.

But if you do, Romans 8, 38 and 39 is for you.

You have one that goes with you.

You have one that has promised to love you from the end at the beginning.

You have one that is uh your constant friend, constant friend and guide.

He is one who has already put the path under your feet.

And for our adults, we can live with a lot of fear.

I really appreciate the the apostle's honesty, nor things present, right?

Things that we are feeling today, nor things to come.

And we often worry about the future.

And our fears, our anxieties, don't, of course, come out of thin air.

They come out of the afflictions and the distresses we experience.

They come out of our story.

Wherever you have experienced trauma, it's going to be the area where you are going to be most prone to distrust the love of God and his provision for you.

And the Apostle Paul would not gloss that over, but he would ask you this day to bring that out into the light of all the darkness of the book of Romans and see that although we have trespassed all his commands, God has done.

God has given us the greatest gift to reconcile us to his son.

And he has given us his son, he will give us all things, and even as the son was appointed to a hard task, he can appoint us to hard and difficult gaze, all the while saying to you, You are the Father's beloved.

There is a love which knew you before you were born.

This love will keep you in all the ages to come.

And this is the assurance we're meant to live with.

And this is in a sense where the sermon has to end.

Because this deep gladness and joy, this freedom, this assurance, uh I cannot give to you.

I cannot persuade you.

Uh, you cannot persuade yourself, you can't give it to any of your loved ones.

But the Father and the Son have given God the Spirit to grant this faith.

This is really what we're talking about today, is living a life of faith, and faith is a gift of God.

And so the right place to end is to say, Holy Spirit, I see the power of these things, but they are foreign to my heart.

Would you give me this faith this day?

Would you do a work of your grace in my heart, even as I sit here this morning?

And so let us go and let's pray.

And let's ask the Holy Spirit to give this.

Would you pray with me?

Holy Spirit, you see how we have uh fears and anxieties, troubles and distresses for things today and things to come.

But we ask this day that you would give us the faith to believe the promise of our security and our victory in your love.

Would you grant on our hearts a sense of your the warmth of Christ's love?

Would you grant us this joy, this freedom, this rest?

Lord, I pray for those who are spiritually searching this day, with all the noise of our culture, I pray that they would hear and see how your love is costly.

Lord, it's it's it's valuable, it's rich.

Lord, you have loved us at great cost to yourself.

May we feel the weight of that.

And we ask these things confidently, Lord, because we pray not in our own merits, but we pray in the name and in the finished work of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Amen.