What then shall we say to these things?
If God is for us, who is against us?
He that spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not also with Him freely give us all things?
Who shall lay anything to the charge of God’s elect? It is God that justifieth;
who is He that shall condemn? It is Christ Jesus that died, yea rather, that was raised from the dead, who is at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us.
Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or anguish, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?
Even as it is written,
“For Thy sake we are killed all the day long;
We were accounted as sheep for the slaughter.”
Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him that loved us.
For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers,
nor height, nor depth, nor any other creation, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
We have had our hearts directed at this time to the glorified Lord Jesus as the object and as the inspiration of our Christian life, endurance, and service.
We have looked at Him on the Mount of Transfiguration and have seen a little of what that meant for the men who were with Him for the rest of their lives.
And what Christ glorified meant to all the others who, at different times, in different ways, and in different places, saw Him in glory: Stephen, Paul, and later again John.
In speaking many, many years afterward of the sole impression that remained with him from the time spent with the Lord Jesus, John summed it all up in one marvellous phrase. A parenthesis it is in his Gospel, but was there ever a more important and wonderful parenthesis?
And we beheld His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.
What they saw, when they saw the Lord Jesus in His glory, was the manifestation of the grace of God.
This portion of Paul’s letter to the Romans, which we have just read, seems to me to be Paul’s way of speaking what he saw in the face of Jesus Christ.
I have been dwelling much upon this part of the Word for many weeks, and the impression has come to me, as I have read to this point and at this point, that this is not the apostle’s worked-out thought all the way through. This is his release.
He has been doing a piece of very laborious work, setting himself to a great treatise. It is that which has defeated all the greatest minds ever since, and still is, in their efforts to fathom this letter and to interpret it.
You have a feeling, as you read and arrive at this point, that the apostle says, “Now, that’s that. Let me say what I am after all the time, what I have really had in mind. Let me unburden my heart.”
And he does so here. “These things” to which he refers—“What shall we say then to these things?”—are all the things he has been saying. What is the upshot? What do they all point to? What is the supreme significance and implication of all that I have been saying?
He goes on to answer his own question and to release from his heart this thing that has been there, prompting all his effort and undertaking: this mighty, mighty revelation of the love of God in Jesus Christ.
I say he was working toward that. It is a painful process.
The earlier stage of the letter, as you know, is occupied with that painful necessity—so unpleasant a necessity—of exposing sin.
He does it very thoroughly. He goes through the whole Gentile world and gives, not an exaggerated picture, but a very terrible picture of sin. There is no place in the whole Bible where sin, in its awfulness, is more exposed than in the early part of this letter.
It is a terrible picture of human sin in its natural state. Then he proceeds from the Gentile world to the Jewish world.
Although Israel was chosen, called, separated, and given so much—a divine deposit, trust, and revelation—it had to be given the law. Israel had to have the law.
You do not need a police force in a perfect state. You do not need law if there is no lawlessness. The very giving of the law, Paul says, is only another proof that Jews are no better than other people in this matter of sin.
By the law, sin is manifested. I have spoken of the police force: the very sight of a policeman says there is wrong in the world. The very giving of the law means that there must be lawlessness. And so Israel is no better than the rest.
Sin is universal. Sin is in every creature. It is the state of the whole creation. It is a terrible exposure, an uncovering, but very necessary.
Oh, I am quite sure Paul got to the end of that and sighed, “I am really glad to get past that and get on to something better than that—really what I am after.”
When you see the point, dear friend, this is what he is after. He must do that, and God must make us know the reality of sin, the awfulness of sin. Sin must become a terrible thing with us before ever we can appreciate the grace of God.
No one ever appreciates divine grace who has seen little or nothing of the sinfulness of sin in their heart. Great pains, then, are taken to expose the reality and nature of sin and its effects, not just to bring condemnation, not to make people miserable, but to lead to the grace of God—to enhance divine grace.
So the apostle says, “Where sin abounded”—over Gentile and Jew, over the whole race, in all the world—a great wave passed over and inundated the whole creation.
Where sin, like a great ocean, spread its flood and abounded, grace did superabound—greater than the greatness of sin.
So he comes to this at last: “What shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who is against us?”
It is a marvellous thing. As you can well see, the apostle is speaking much out of his own experience and history here. Plainly, he catalogues these things which are a real threat to hope, to life, and to prospect—the very, very real and terrible things that he catalogues here.
“Shall tribulation?” Paul knew something about tribulation. Tribulation in his experience was a very real thing indeed.
“Or anguish?” Yes, we find Paul more than once in anguish—anguish over the spiritual state of his beloved converts and the churches. He says concerning the Thessalonians, twice, that he travailed for them.
“Or persecution?” Paul knew quite a bit about that. “Or famine?” He tells us that he was in hunger. “Or nakedness?” Yes, in nakedness. “Or peril? Or sword?” If that is not enough—life, angels, principalities, things present, things to come, powers, height—yes, and I cannot go on enumerating and analysing, for he says no more: “or any other creation.” That covers everything.
“I am persuaded that there is nothing in creation”—all these things, and anything else that you like to gather into that phrase—“I am persuaded that none of these things shall separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus.”
That grace—that grace. Sin need not separate us from the love of God. Do you believe that? Do you believe that sin need not separate you from the love of God?
Because of Romans 8:34: “It is Christ Jesus that died, yea rather, that was raised from the dead, who is at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us.” Therefore sin need not, and on that ground cannot, separate from the love of God.
Now, dear friends, it would perhaps be helpful to stay with all these things, but I have just one end in view this morning, one object. Whether we individually experience all the things mentioned here or not, the fact is that there are a tremendous lot of things—a tremendous lot of things—that are given a complexion by the forces of evil with the object of separating us from the love of God.
Suffering, anguish, persecution, death, and life—for life can be a terrible thing for some of us.
Many, many things that come into our experience are just played upon by these forces of evil everywhere, telling us the love of God is not a reality, that God does not love us. “This is true, positive; this is the evidence.”
We need, in this world, when the winds blow from every quarter, when all the elements are against us, a real anchorage. We need something that will hold. We do.
See Paul—his great and unquestioned devotion to the Lord. There is no question about it. Nevertheless, knowing as he knew in his own heart that there was no controversy between him and the Lord, really, in truth, to be perfectly honest, he was not aware of being in revolt against the Lord or of being contrary to the known will of God.
His whole being was poised toward the pleasure of his Lord, to be well-pleasing unto Him. He knew it. And yet, with that in his heart, he is meeting all these things—all these things.
His ministry is being discredited; his name is being assailed. He is suspect wherever he goes. He moves in an atmosphere all over the world of suspicion and ostracism.
And not only in the world, but amongst Christians. He is not universally loved, even by the churches which had their existence through his ministry.
This thing has spread like an awful vapour everywhere to somehow destroy this man and his ministry. There were not a few who would be glad if he were dead. He knew it. He knew it.
And in these many forms of expression, he met it almost every day of his life. You know, a man—a Christian—meeting things like that needs an anchorage, needs an anchor. When things beat on you, sorrow over sorrow, you need an anchor.
Your anchorage will not be self-vindication or self-justification. You will not get anywhere along that line. Your anchorage will not be your good argument and answer to your enemies. That will not help you at all.
Your anchorage will not even be your own sense of rightness. The only anchor that will hold in all this is God’s love for you—God’s love.
You may make mistakes, and we are always wrong when we think of Paul or any other apostle as being faultless.
I used, in younger days, to feel it was a terrible thing—a terrible thing—to allow myself to think that Paul could be wrong, or any other apostle could be wrong, could make a mistake. “Well, these men must be infallible.” Oh, no, we are wrong when we take that attitude.
Paul made his mistakes. He let himself in for difficulties by his mistakes. But what he came out with was this: the love of God is not changed when I make mistakes. The love of God does not let me go when I make mistakes, when I make wrong decisions, take wrong directions, perhaps say wrong things.
That does not break the cable between my soul and the anchor of His love. It holds. “I am persuaded”—I am thus persuaded—that none of these things, anything in creation that you can mention, shall separate us from the love which is in Christ Jesus.
That is what Paul saw in the face of Jesus Christ. John called it “full of grace and truth.” Paul would have endorsed that. Indeed, this is his great endorsement.
Sin? Yes—horrible, despicable, wicked, cruel. Unfaithfulness on the part of Israel? Departure from divine intention? Yes.
He throws in a section immediately after this. The next two or three chapters are a section by themselves to illustrate his point. Israel’s unfaithfulness does not make any difference to the divine love.
Let us speak about that just for a moment. This section that he puts in to illustrate his point: “Did God cast off His people? God forbid.”
“Yes, but look what this people has done. Look at their work. Look at Stephen. Look at their work. Look what they are doing everywhere.” Yes, they may be under judgment. They may be suffering for their wickedness and their iniquity. They may have been set aside for a dispensation as God’s instrument because of their unfaithfulness.
But, says the apostle, that fact has not ended God’s love for them. That has not ended God’s love for them. Judgment in this world and in this life is never a proof that God’s love is at an end. It may be the very proof of His love.
Better for us to suffer, when we do wrong, and discover something new of His love through suffering. I want you to say, with many others, what little we do apprehend of the divine love comes to us by the knowledge of our own faultiness and what it leads to.
But here it is: a great illustration. Israel—even yet a spiritual company from natural Israel, as Paul foresaw, will be found in the Kingdom and in the church.
God has not washed His hands eternally of them as a people and said, “No Jew, no Israelite, will ever again have a chance.” So bad as they have been and done what they have done, He has set His love upon them. His love will keep the door open.
So we could go on. But you see, dear friends, the message: “Who shall separate us from the love of God?”
“What shall we say to these things?” What shall we say to these things? “If God is for us”—and this is how He is for us, and where He is for us, and when He is for us—through everything, it is love.
What shall we say? Well, after making this tremendous sweep of divine love, and then illustrating it with Israel in this most impressive way, he answers his question, his interrogation: “What shall we say to these things?”
I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service.
What shall we say? The answer is not in words, but in an act: present your body by the mercies of God. That love, so amazing, so divine, demands our soul, our life.
So we would see Jesus. What are you looking for? This is what you ought to see when you see Jesus: the love of God in the face of Jesus Christ.