A Love Story
You Are Loved
Romans 8:12-25
Rev. Tim Callow
Preached Sun. July 19th, 2020
The Bible is a love story. The Old Testament is about God’s love for Israel. The New Testament is about Jesus’ love for his Church. The whole Bible is about God’s love for humanity. As John memorably and pithily puts it: God is love. As we pour through the pages of the Bible, we do not find a God who remains aloof. Instead, God is revealing himself, acting in history, calling a people to be made his own. Working to overcome sin, overcome death, and save those he loves.
We see God’s radical and scandalous love very early on. God calls Abram, or as he would be more memorably known Abraham, from his father’s house. He says, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, that you will be be a blessing.” Genesis does not tell us why God chooses Abram. We are not told why God chooses his son Isaac. Or why God chooses Isaac’s son Jacob. God sets his heart upon Jacob’s people, the people of Israel, and delivers them from slavery in Egypt. He tells Moses, “It was not because you were more numerous than any other people that the Lord set his heart on you and chose you—for you were the fewest of all peoples. It was because the Lord loved you and kept the oath that he swore to your ancestors, that the Lord has brought you out with a mighty hand, and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt.”
God loves. God loves the people of Israel. It’s because God loves the people of Israel that God becomes their God. It’s because God loves the people of Israel that he gives them the Law. God chooses Israel for no other reason than that he loves them. And God chooses Israel to bless the nations, and to be blessed.
Israel may be chosen, and Israel may be loved, but Israel is still human. And sin still creeps in, and disrupts the relationship, and separates the people from God. The books of the prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Hosea, Amos, are all about the ways the people of Israel have turned away from the love of God. And how God earnestly desires to renew the covenant he had made.
Human sin does not keep God from loving us. When we are faithless, God remains faithful. In Christ a new covenant is forged, and a new relationship is made. The love story continues, in a new way. God’s love is extended in the Spirit, that all who receive the Spirit of God may be adopted. Yes. Adopted. We are made children of God by the Spirit of God. God’s love is so great for us, that despite our failings and our sins and our own guilt and shame, God looks beyond that. God doesn’t care for that. No. God would still pour out his Spirit on us. God would still make us his children.
Let me say it again: God has adopted us as his own children! This is not something we are by nature. It’s not by virtue of our creation in God’s image that we are God’s children. It is by virtue of God’s love for us, and the work of Christ, that we are adopted! God selects us for his own, because that is how great God’s love is for us. God would bring us into his family, and make us co-heirs with him. We are like the girl in the fairy tale who becomes a princess. Or the boy made a prince. This is the good news. There is no condemnation. We receive the Spirit of adoption. “And if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ”
Joint heirs! We may too share in glory and joy and peace, “if, in fact, we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him.”
We are adopted as children of God, made co-heirs with Christ, but what we will be has not yet been revealed. Here is the difficult part of Paul’s message. Yes, the love story goes on. Yes, God has adopted us in Christ. Yes, we are joint heirs. But that also means we share in Jesus with suffering. A suffering, he’s quick to remind us, that cannot be compared with what will be revealed. But a suffering nevertheless. What should we make of this today? How can we say at once the beautiful truth that we are adopted as children of God, but we also must suffer? What does suffering have to do with such a beautiful love story?
I think today we labor under the illusion that suffering is, in principle, avoidable. We believe there ought to be the right procedure, or the right painkiller, or the right policy, or the right people in charge. If things go well, suffering can be avoided. But truth is in this world suffering will always be with us. We will always know pains, and griefs, and heartache. It is unavoidable. And Paul knew that. How could he not? Paul had suffered much for the sake of Christ. He suffered stonings, and shipwrecks, and lashings. He suffered through hunger and poverty and danger. The life he knew was characterized by all sorts of suffering. And he thought that the suffering he faced was a reflection of the suffering Jesus faced.
I don’t want to play the martyr, but I’ve known suffering too. More ordinary sufferings, perhaps. But I ministered for two years while I was very ill and was too stubborn to get the right treatment. I’ve seen death. I’ve grieved, deeply. But never through it all did I think this suggests I did something wrong, or that God does not love me, or God is not present through it all. I knew the love of God was strong enough to meet me through it, to carry me through it, and I learned about God’s love in the midst of suffering. We may know suffering, but God’s love is such that it can embrace and overcome the suffering.
We are co-heirs of the suffering messiah. The one who sweat blood. The one who took the lashings. The one who faced death on the cross. If we are joint heirs with the crucified one, we ought to expect to face sufferings. We ought to feel loss. And know pain. And grieve. Being a child of God doesn’t mean we will do any better than Jesus. And if we suffer it doesn’t mean God doesn’t love us. No.
God loves us to bear us through the suffering. God loves us to give us hope. Our adoption as children of God, that gives us hope. God’s love for us, that gives us hope. Hope that can be seen is not hope. But hope we do have. Hope in the resurrection, hope in the presence of God.
The Bible is a love story. It reminds us that God loves us. That God loves us so much he gave us his only begotten son, that all who believe in him would not perish, but would be adopted as children of God. And being children of God, we know God loves us. We have hope. And we know the glory that awaits is worth far more than the sufferings we meet today.