B’s - Romans 8
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We have seen in Romans 8 1-17 that those who have faith in Jesus are not condemend, as we desere, before GOd.
For JEsus obeyed God perfectly,
died as a man in our place,
and now gives us His righteousness before God.
And so while our presnet experinece of faith is one that desires to do God’s will,
but often find we sin and give into the flesh -
we can none the less, rejoice in Christ,
for he has freed us from the body of death, and made us alive in Christ.
That is to walk by the Spirit.
This week, Paul moves from the link between our sinful flesh and the spirit filled life in Christ,
to explain how it is not only our experience of spirtual battle, that is in a time of now and not yet,
But also the whole physical realm and our physical experience of life is in a time of waiting.
Something we might believe, but I think we struggle to live by,
so I want to start with a question for us in response to v28
And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.
And here is the question.
Is that true?
And it is not just a theoretical question about what we believe about the Bible,
we may tick the box that it is true.
But do we believe it.
I heard a sermon once on Romans 8. It was a good sermon, thinking about how suffering will be used by God now to prepare us for the hope we have coming in the future. And that our circumstances may not be comfortable, but they are for our good.
It was a church we had concerns about, and as the sermon finished, I was encouraged - that is until the alter call in response to the sermon was to come to the front
and that if you had enough faith,
God will work miracles and deliver you from all your trials and difficulties.
There was a disconnect - that I think we are all prone to,
between what we say we believe theologically,
and what we actually feel,
or want to be true experientially.
We hear it is true that even sufferign is for our good -
but we in practice,
think that unless we are spared discomfort,
Our faith in God is failing,
or more often,
God is failing us.
So let me tweak our question, is v28 not just true, but can I live by it?
And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.
Is it true?
Is it true?
Can you live it?
Can you live it?
It is not an easy or obvious answer.
If all things work together for the good of those who love him, then think what that includes.
It includes everything that happens, that has happened to you.
All things.
Our lives are not simple.
And they are not always easy.
We experience many things, of course many of them good, but also hard things.
Pain, sorrow, loss, abuse, loneliness.
All things, for our good,
is that true?
Can I live it?
How, in the light of all that we have experienced,
can this be not just a truth that we can tick off,
but a truth by which we can live?
And so Paul, picks the hardest of all subjects to make this amazing claim: Suffering.
If God is control of everything, then why does he allow sufferings to happen.
And it is especially crucial when we consider, why God allows his children, v17, to suffer.
If God loves his children, Christians,
why does he allow them to suffer?
And how can we say in all that we go through, that
in all things
God works
for the good of those who love him,
Is it true?
Can we live it?
To begin to answer that question we need to understand what Paul means by ‘good’.
What is the good to which God works all things?
We’ll come back to the earlier verses in a moment, but just look at what comes after:
And we know that in all things
God works for the good of those who love him,
who have been called according to his purpose.
For those God
foreknew he also predestined
to be conformed to the image of his Son,
that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters.
And those he predestined,
he also called;
those he called, he also justified;
those he justified, he also glorified.
SLIDE with the verse (chain links)
Verse 30 is a chain of 5 links, of what God is doing in the life of the believer.
The reformers called is a golden chain - becasue each link (foreknowledge, predestination, calling, justification, and glorification)
is divinely forged and cannot be broken.
Before the beginning of time God ‘Foreknew’ His people,
He knew about and that he would create you and and me,
before even the earth began to form!
He ‘predestined’ them,
before the beginning of time he chose believers to belong to him -
and before we throw up our objections to this,
consider Paul arguments through Romans so far -
No one is righteous,
God is just to judge,
We are dead in sin.
Predestination is not some unfair God at work,
it is HIs deep, long, intense grace and love towards his children
- despite our behaviour towards him.
Without it, not a single person would ever be saved.
Having predestined them in time, ‘he called them’.
There comes a point in time when those who are predestined, hear the gospel and God calls them irresistibly into his family. (undeserved, anavoidable, irrisitable love.
Those called he also justified - God declares them right in his eyes.
and those whom he justified
he also glorified.
Now it is this process that defines what is the ‘good’ in v28.
The good to which God works all things, is that we are glorified.
It is put in the past tense there, although it is in the future,
but it is in the past tense because it is certain.
We will be made perfect and be with God forever.
Glorified.
That will happen when Jesus returns, and that is the good to which God works all things.
The final goal of glory.
Paul, wants to show us how our current experience, everything that happens, works towards that final good.
And in particular, Paul takes the hardest elements of our present experience, ,suffering,
and shows us how that takes us to our final good, glory.
And his point is simple,
That suffering now prepares us for glory to come.
That suffering now prepares us for glory to come.
And it does it by, v. 29 ‘conforming us to the image of his Son’.
As God makes us more like Jesus he prepares us for glory and he does that through suffering.
Paul introduces the idea in the earlier verses, look back to vv. 16-17:
The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children. Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory.
See the link he makes between suffering and glory.
Suffering brings glory.
If we share in Christ’s sufferings, then we will be glorified with him.
Suffering brings glory.
In v. 18 he compares present suffering, with future glory.
I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.
So we get out your old fashioned scales - we put suffering on the left and future glory on the right.
And ‘future glory’ bangs down on the scale.
it far outweighs our present sufferings.
But Paul’s argument is more than just,
the future is going to be great, so endure the present sufferings.
The present sufferings are not just something to be endured, but
Suffering now prepares us for glory to come.
How? Well, suffering forms us to the likeness of Christ.
Let’s follow his argument about suffering:
He begins with suffering in general.
And shows us where suffering comes from.
claiming that Creation, as we experience it now is waiting, longing:
For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope
Where we read of “Creation waiting…” and “Creation subjected to frustration…”
these are connected with “our present sufferings…” in verse 18.
In our suffering, in one sense, we see that creation is broken,
and is waiting longingly to be put right.
Try as humans to put creation right, we can’t.
Environmental protections, met with natural disaters,
healthcare advancements met with Covid 19.
Peace treaty met with bombs
and so on.
The world is broken and we can’t fix it, despite right efforts to do so,
But the world is not broken by accident, nor without purpose.
The suffering, the brokenness of creation has a purpose.
The sufferings of this world are not just a sign that things have gone wrong,
it is an anticipation that things will be put right again.
For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope
There is a purpose,
the groaning and frustration of creation is not just meaningless,
it is subjected in hope.
The hope is the glory to come,
for creation, that means freedom from its bondage,
and that comes with v19, ‘the freedom of the glory of the children of God’
That’s you and me, Christians, the children of God.
The whole of creation is waiting for glory to come to us.
Then, when the freedom of the glory of the children of God comes,
creation itself will be set free.
We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.
Pains of childbirth are not meaningless pains, but pains which have a glorious end.
It is a picture of suffering, which is not only outweighed by the glorious end to come,
but suffering which brings about that glorious end.
Suffering now prepares us for glory to come.
But This ‘general world suffering’ is felt even more personally by believers:
.
Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies.
The reason that suffering is more poignant for believers,
is because the Spirit’s fixing action has already begun in us.
We know something better is coming,
Paul’s been talking about this for 2 chapters.
By God’s Spirit, God’s believers, experience a partial restoring, as the Spirit renews us in our hearts and our lives - He infects our new desires towards God.
But this renewing is only partial as we still wait for when our bodies of sin to also receive new life and be fully restored when Christ’s returns.
We see the conflict again here, which comes through in the suffering of the Christian.
Christians, like creation, groans for the time when the physical creation will catch up with the work that the Spirit is already doing in them.
Even now the Spirit is working in us so that we are more and more conformed to the new creation,
not completely,
but we are made more like Jesus.
But the more we are conformed to the new creation the more we feel the pain and suffering of the old creation.
We were broken like the whole of creation,
but as we are brought closer to the new creation as God works in us,
then we increasingly feel the pain of the old creation
and we long for the day when we and the creation will be fully renewed.
Suffering now prepares us for glory to come.
We see that hope of glory again in vv. 24-25:
For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what they already have? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.
So, we sense the renewal of all creation and our sinful fleshly bodies,
Becasue of the Spirit in our hearts - but we do not yet have it.
That is why it’s called hope.
And we hope of the full renewal of our hearts, our bodies, and the whole of creation.
In a sense, we feel the suffering more, because God is at work in us,
and we long all the more for the completion of that work.
It’s why as we go in in faith, while we are conformed to be more like Christ,
We actually feel more suffering spiritually and physically in our world,
Because we see it more clearly as it ought to be (will be)
and realise we and the world are further from it than we’d realised.
So we suffer more but hope and long more as well.
The experience of suffering now produces in us hope for a time when there will be no suffering.
That is the good that God is working in us
He is producing hope, through our suffering now, for the far better glory to come.
As we increasingly feel the pain we increasingly long for the day when the world and everything in it will be put right.
The theme of this whole section is not so much suffering but glory.
Paul’s point is that suffering is not opposed to glory but a preparation for glory.
As we are conformed to the image of his Son, we are prepared for glory.
Suffering opens our eyes to a world frustrated and waiting,
but it also directs our eyes in hope for when all things will be put right,
to the world of complete restoration.
Pause
This certainly does not mean we enjoy suffering,
but it does mean that suffering has a purpose,
likening us to Christ, preparing us for glory.
And in our weakness the Spirit helps us vv. 26-27.
And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God’s people in accordance with the will of God.
This is more than, but not less,
when we are at a loss for the right words to pray in our weakness.
The Spirit within us, God himself knows our hearts, and The Spirit prays to God on our behalf prayers that align with God’s will.
Perhaps you have known the darkest times of suffering,
and sat in tears just muttering - please help me Lord, groaning in sadness.
Well at those times, you may not find instant relief,
you may not think God is hearing you,
you may think there is no reason to your pain,
But the truth is, The Spirit is praying for you, for exactly what you need:
Preparation for Glory, hope in what is to come.
But there is also a much bigger spiritual intercession going on between God the Spirit and God the Father for us.
As Creation groans, so do the chidlren of God groan for our glory,
so the SPirit Groans to God for us.
For our Good.
And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.
How does this help us to make sense of what we actually experience?
It’s not a blind, oh well God is working for our good.
No God is working in order that we might be sustained in hope for a better day.
not to temporary relief, or false hope but to real hope.
In the suffering we experience now, God is working.
He is working to produce hope in us,
that we will certainly be in glory.
paause
It means suffering is hard but not useless.
That we are not just waiting for glory to come,
but in our present experience,
even of suffering, we are being prepared for that glory.
We don’t have time to look at vv. 35-38 in detail,
but just see the optimism that it creates in us to face the future:
Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?
For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Nothing that this world, past or future, can separate us from the love of God.
SO we face suffering not as meaningless pain but as something that drives us in hope to glory.
pause
And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.
Is it true?
can we live that truth?
Pray
