Wednesday, August 24, 2022
Romans 8 Super Conquerors
ROMANS 8:37 IN ALL THESE THINGS WE OVERWHELMINGLY CONQUER
What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us?32 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?33 Who shall bring any charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies.34 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 indeed is interceding for us.35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword?36 As it is written,
"For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered."
37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.38 For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers,39 nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God
What things do you fear?
A fellow was wandering through a graveyard… as he stumbled along in the dark on his way home from the pub, he fell into a hole.. it had been prepared for a funeral the following day.
He struggled to find a way out of the hole. It was too deep. The clay was slippery with the rain that night. After struggling for half an hour to get out he collapsed in the end of the grave. Suddenly there was a murmur from the other end. "You'll never get out of here!" He did! Of course the voice from the other end was someone else who fell into the same opened grave earlier that night. But it is amazing what fear will do to a man.
Superstitions.. sometimes they are about fears.. someone's father in law dies, should the bride cancel her wedding until the following year? Why? Fear of bad luck. Fear of the future.
Paul continued his encouragement by asking the rhetorical question, "What then shall we say to these things?" I understand "these things" to be the summation of Paul's teaching to this point: the depravity of humankind (1:18–3:20), justification by grace through faith (3:21–5:21), and sanctification by the Holy Spirit (6:1–8:30). As believers consider the course of salvation, they cannot miss the proactive role of God in bringing them along the path.
These things.. includes all the these things that are bad that work together for good to thise who love God.. these things includes the struggle you and I have with sin all our lives. These things are "one of those things" that occurs that distresses us.
Swindoll writes Make no mistake about it; there is plenty to oppose us in life. Hardships and tragedies relentlessly batter away at the hope of all believers. Persecutors and naysayers oppose us. Indwelling sin opposes us. Fear of loss opposes us. The evil one and those who serve him oppose us. And, eventually, death opposes us. But what are they compared to the power of God? "In all these things . . ." (8:37). What things? Everything the Christian experiences. From the initial elation of emancipation to the sobering reality of freedom, to the realization that our old slave master will not let us go so easily, to the struggle with the flesh, to the persecution of the world. The joys, the sorrows, the setbacks, the triumphs—all of it. In all these things we, the sheep (8:36), conquer."
n Christ Jesus our Lord.
THE SPHERE OF OUR VICTORY
"In all these things" What things? In verse 35 Paul gathers together most of the troubles we can imagine: "tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, danger, sword." Here we have life at its bleakest, with circumstances at their most difficult—what he refers to in verse 18 as "the sufferings of this present time." Nothing that's painful seems to be excluded. Such is the sphere of our victory. Where you are saying, "I can't survive, and I can't achieve anything in this place, then that is the place God wants you lovingly to labour on, toiling and struggling." With that thorn in the flesh? Yes. In all this uncertainty? Yes. With these black clouds above? Yes. With your temperament and your limitations? Yes. That is the sphere God wants you to labour. With every appearance to the contrary that seems to saying one word – failure. There God is declaring, "Victory!"
It is "in all these things"—in the midst of them, while we are experiencing them, and by means of them, that "we are more than conquerors." "These things" form the arena in which our victory is being won.
"In all these things." Romans 8:28
Romans 7:24 24 Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?
Negatively he lists the main sources of opposition that we shall meet and assures us that they will prove unable to separate us from the love of Christ. Then the positive heart of the apostle's answer is found in our text (v. 37), fourteen simple words, all but one of them words of a single syllable, but pulsating with power: "In all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us." Far from every "tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, danger, sword"
There is no way for us to avoid them; we cannot even to stop their blusterings and threatenings. We cannot pretend that they are not there – those things that seem intent on separating us from the love of God and obscuring our sense of his love for us. There is no denying the fact that sometimes they place us under tremendous stress. We know that. They seem to imperil our souls, and affect our health of body and mind. They come crashing into our lives and they can seem to be all powerful. We cannot evade their full frontal attacks. But we know that there is only one way to the Celestial City and that is through the Valley of the Shadow of Death. But in those trials, and through the Valley we shall be more than conquerors.
Sometimes you hear a Christian saying, or you yourself say under your breath, "If only I had a different life, a different career, a different place to live, a different church – then what a conqueror I would be. What a great Christian! What a great life I'd live for Jesus. Change my environment and I'd be a hero for the Lord." "No!" says Paul, "not a different situation. No!" You must accept take your own things, your own place, your own position, your own providence in all its particularity as it is today. And in your today, and in the things you meet today, and in the circumstances of today you confront them! Don't wish for another battlefield, and other enemies, and another stadium in another age and locality. Don't be too earnest about having other sorrows and other anxieties and other difficulties. Don't long too much for that because in all these things, in every single one of them, God says they are the places and the times in which you are going to win the victory.
THE SOURCE OF OUR VICTORY
"Who is against us?" (8:31) No Foe Can Defeat Us
"Who will bring a charge against God's elect?" (8:33) No Failure Can Disinherit Us
"Who is the one who condemns?" (8:34) No Fault Can Distress Us
"Christ Jesus is He who died . . ." That's the doctrine of substitution. The Son of God paid the debt of sin on our behalf.
"Who was raised . . ." That's the doctrine of resurrection. The Son of God was raised to new life and, by our identification with Him, we, too, have new life.
"Who is at the right hand of God . . ." That's the doctrine of accession. The Son of God has received the title to the entire universe and now rules as its king and ultimate judge.
"Who also intercedes for us . . ." That's the doctrine of intercession. The Son of God is our advocate, our representative in heaven, faithfully looking out for our welfare.
"Who will separate us from the love of Christ?" (8:35) No Fear Can Deflate Us
THE STRENGTH OF OUR VICTORY
37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.
John Piper explains it: "A conqueror defeats his enemy, but one who is more than a conqueror subjugates his enemy. A conqueror nullifies the purpose of his enemy; one who is more than a conqueror makes the enemy serve his own purposes. A conqueror strikes down his foe; one who is more than a conqueror makes his foe his slave."
What Satan meant for evil , God uses for good, because God uses these attacks to work in us an even greater weight of glory than we would have experienced without them.
The Who of your salvation is greater than the who of your opposition and he transforms the opposition into the servants of his purpose.
This also explains that strange quote Paul gives in the middle.
36 As it is written 'Because of you we are being put to death all day long; we are counted as sheep to be slaughtered.'
(The inclusion of this verse always confused me --b/c right in the middle of this soaring rhetoric Paul, Paul quotes a rather depressing lyric: "Because of you, we are being put to death all day long, we are
counted as sheep to be slaughtered.")
Paul is employing a teaching technique common to Rabbis of his day called a "remez" . They would s ing one lyric of a popular song , and your mind would sing the rest. Like if I sing " Ooh, I wanna dance
with… " your mind fills in the rest.
Psalm 44 was a well-known song of lament written at a dark time in Israel's history when it seemed like God had forsaken Israel because of her sin. Israel's enemies were all around them, crushing them , and so the psalmist asks if God had taken his eyes off of them forever.
Romans 8 is the Paul's answer to that, the gospel's answer to that: NO. If not even our sin could separate us from the love of God, could anything else?
If God didn't turn his back on u s when we had turned our backs on him, will he turn his back on us now?
38 For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, 39 nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Some of you are living in Psalm 44 today. You think, 'Pastor , if you only knew what I was going through, and how much of it was my own fault, you wouldn't say God can turn it for good.''
But can I tell you something? If you are living in that dark , desperate, hopeless place of Psalm 44 , you are PRECISELY the person Paul is talking about here.
Your Psalm 44 is being swallowed up in Romans 8.
Do you feel like a sheep set to be slaughtered ? Paul calls you more than a conqueror .
Do you feel like darkness is your only friend ? Paul says that not even death itself can harm you.
God's purpose is unchangeable , his power is unchallengeable and his love is unconditional , so there is nothing I have to fear.
DMLJ: "Think, man! Are you afraid (v. 31)? You aren't thinking! Are you worried (v. 32)? You aren't thinking! Are you feeling guilty (v. 33)? You aren't thinking! Embrace the logic of free grace and justification! These aren't dry doctrines; they are life itself. And if you are not living right now with
overwhelming assurance and power, you haven't really understood them!"
My Saviour, Thou hast offered rest: Oh, give it then to me;
The rest of ceasing from myself, To find my all in Thee.
Oh, to be saved from myself, dear Lord, Oh, to be lost in Thee;
Oh, that it might be no more I,
But Christ that lives in me.
When William Carey was dying, he turned to a friend and said, "When I have gone, do not speak about William Carey, but think and talk about William Carey's Saviour. I desire alone that Christ might be ..." and then he used a significant word, "that Christ might be magnified."
It is the power of selfishness, It is the wilful I;
And ere my Lord can live in me, My very self must die.
There is a foe whose hidden power
The Christian well may fear; More subtle far than inbred sin,
And to the heart more dear:
How may I know the victory? so many cry. Commit thyself to Calvary. Consent to die.
You can't kill yourself. But you can consent to die, and God will bring you into the place of identification with Christ and the Cross, and to the place where you by faith are reckoning His death yours.
God's way of gain is seeming loss: We die to live;
And His life comes as to the Cross My life I give.
We must depend upon the Holy Spirit. In Romans 8 the apostle uses this little sentence which sums up the whole teaching: "The Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free . . . " There is more to it than that, of course' but that is the summary. You see, it is the Holy Spirit who forms Christ in the believer, and who frees the believer from sin and from self. That is what the apostle means when he says in Galatians 5, "Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lusts of the flesh." In other words, bring your life under the sovereignty of the Holy Spirit, and self will be kept in the place of subjugation and death, and Christ will increase. You can't do it yourself. It is not your own effort, your own struggling, your own striving. Self cannot deal with self. Self cannot subjugate self. But the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus can make me free from sin and self.
Romans 8:37 "In all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us."
Courage in hard times?
Five young men were burned for Christ in Lyons on May 16, 1553. John Calvin had written them a letter and urged them to be faithful: "Be ready to give your life at any time . . . May the Son of God be glorified by your shame . . .This is sufficient cause to despise the whole world with its pride, till we be gathered into that everlasting Kingdom where we shall fully enjoy those blessings which we now only possess in hope." His students proved true as steel. Dressed in gray shirts and tied together, they were taken in a cart to the place of execution. And as they passed through the streets, they began to sing. It was the ninth psalm. Listen to them:
Wholehearted thanksgiving to you I will bring;
In praise of your marvellous works I will sing.
For joy I will shout and exultingly cry in praise of your name,
Lord my God, O Most High.
The Lord is a stronghold, a refuge, a tower,
For all the oppressed in their dark, troubled hour.
Those knowing your name, Lord, trust you for your grace;
You have not forsaken those seeking your face.
When the five young men had been fastened to the stakes, they were bound together with a heavy chain and the fire was lit. They stood fast and for a little while, until they entered glory, they could be heard calling to each other, "Courage, brother, courage!" We who have gathered here today will never be exactly together again on this earth. But until we do meet once more, let us cry to each other as we separate and take up our crosses, "Courage, brother, courage!" "In all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us."
Back of all that foes have plotted, Back of all that saints have planned,
Back of schemes by men or demons, Moves a higher, hidden Hand.
Warp and woof are Heaven's making, All the pattern good and wise;
Tho' on earth's side oft perplexing, Clear and right to heavenly eyes.
All earth's agents act with freedom, Choosing, whether love or hate,
Faith in God, or bold defiance; None are shackled slaves of fate.
Yet the Hand that guides is hidden, Moving secret and unseen,
Firmly guiding life's great drama, Every act and shifting scene.
Even human wrath, unknowing, Serves the one controlling Will;
Man proposes; God disposes; All things His design fulfil.
To that goal of all the ages, All of history's windings tend;
And despite all foes or factions God proves Victor in the end. AT Pierson
