God loves you. Lots. He also loves you enough to let you screw up, but that’s another sermon for another day. Have at this one!
Matthew 13:31-33,44-52; Romans 8:26-39; Psalm 119:129-136; 1 Kings 3:5-12
Paul in our lesson from Romans 8 this week is about as clear as it gets: “If God is for us, who can be against us?” and “[Nothing can] separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” It’s all there is to it, really, and it just fits the book of Romans so well.
Throughout the whole letter to the Roman Christians, Paul is giving what amounts to a Christianity 101 lesson. In Romans 1 through 3, he begins the letter saying, essentially, “Guess what everybody, not a single one of you can say you’re better than anyone else because you all have sinned. It doesn’t matter what your background is, or who your parents were, or what you have or haven’t done in your life, we’re all horrible miserable sinners.” It’s a kind of depressing way to start, but that’s the point. In order for us to really know what God has done for us, we first have to know where we are without him, and that’s what Paul is doing.
By the end of Romans 3, and the beginning of Romans 4, Paul starts to remind his readers that even though we are sinners, all of the stuff that gets in the way of our friendship with God is taken away because of Jesus Christ. It’s not because of anything we did — in fact it’s in spite of what we have done — but because Jesus took our sinfulness upon himself on the cross.
As we get farther along in Romans, into chapters 5, 6, and 7, Paul then talks primarily about what comes after God decided that even though we wanted nothing to do with Him, he loved us enough to take our punishment for us. He talks about how we are now no longer slaves of sin, but instead set free. We read how, in Baptism, we die to sin and then are raised again in Christ, even though we still struggle with the effects of sin in our lives.
Finally, as we get to Romans 8, Paul starts talking about some of things God does for us, again not because of anything we did, but simply because He loves us. In this section, he starts to get into an issue the Roman Christians are dealing with on a very personal level: suffering. You see, in and around the late 50’s AD (this letter was written around AD 58) there was a guy named Nero on the Roman Imperial Throne. For reasons that aren’t entirely clear, Nero really hated Christians. While previous emperors considered Christians a mildly troublesome sect of Judaism, Nero singled them out.
Now, for a Christian living in Rome, right in Nero’s backyard, you lived under the constant threat death, usually in the arena, and often involving wild beasts. Nero really liked feeding Christians to lions. Things got really ugly in AD 64 when Nero blamed Christians for the Great Fire of Rome, but that was at least five years after the letter to the Romans was written.
Anyways, long story short, Christian persecution was ramping up in Rome, and Paul wanted to remind the Christians of a few simple things. First, God is on your side, and no one can get in His way. Second, the only person who can condemn you is Jesus Christ, and he died so that you wouldn’t be condemned. And third, there is absolutely nothing in this world — not death or life, nor angels and demons, nor things in the past, present or future, not governments, height nor depth — that can get in the way of the love that God has for us.
That’s what it really comes down to anyways. It’s not about sin; it’s not about things we have or haven’t done; it’s not about guilt; it’s not about being good enough; it’s not about perfection; it’s not about being Lutheran; it’s not about praying enough; it’s not about ANYTHING — except that God loves us enough to send us son to die in our place for our sins, only to raise him up that we might have eternal life with Him. God chose us to be His own when we didn’t deserve to be chosen, and there is nothing that can get in the way of God’s love.