1/27/57

Scripture: Romans 8: 28-39.

Text: Romans 8: 38,39.

The apostle Paul had always believed in the God of Israel’s fathers. He was thoroughly trained in the tradition of the Pharisees from his youth. But when, after persecuting Christians, he became himself a Christian, he laid hold of something extraordinarily powerful. Perhaps it might be more accurate to say that God laid hold on Paul with extraordinary power. From that time on, Paul was a man whose self and abilities were entirely dedicated to God in Christ Jesus.

Love had not been the chief characteristic of his life as a Jewish Pharisee. Nor had he thought of God as love, so much as rigid justice. It is worthy of note, therefore, to read in this light the words of his letter to the Christians of Rome as we have it in the closing verse of the 8th chapter. Paul is convinced, by that time, that nothing --- nothing, can separate Christians from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Now this is strong doctrine! When you consider that he himself (1) suffered with a constant physical malady of some sort, from which he apparently never recovered; (2) and you remember that he was hated by people who plotted to take his life; (3) that he was thrust into jail; (4) beaten; (5) chased from one place to the next; (6) that he was burdened with the waywardness and dissension and perversity of people in the very churches he helped to establish, he could still insist that nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord, I think you may understand that he has something well worth pondering.

And what he has, is not just the road to serenity; it may lead to considerable turmoil. It is not sweet peace; it may lead to severe conflict. It is not a “cure” for all the sufferings of life; it may be a call to endure suffering and tragedy like a hardy soldier of the spirit. With minds geared in our time to the romantic expectation of a happy ending to all of our perplexities and problems, it is not easy for us to read Paul. But he has a theology that is well worth reflecting, pondering and working to understand.

This past week I heard a man who has done a good deal of this kind of digging say that he wanted, in tackling some such real problem of understanding, to get at it so hard that he could “sweat the fat off his brain.” So I suggest that in these few minutes we at least grapple with some of the ideas encountered here in understanding Paul’s bold statement, if perchance we may see a little deeper, and with more assurance, into the mysteries of the life which we live and share with those around us.

Paul is not the only one who speaks with great confidence about the love of God in Christ. Probably the briefest definition of God to be found anywhere is found in the letter known as I John, the 4th chapter: “God is love.” [I John 4: 8b]. Just three words that any beginner in Sunday School can memorize, and often does. But can we believe it with a deep, mature conviction?

I think we may rebel against this brief definition. Certainly I hear it questioned by people who are faced with deep perplexities and distress. Can you say it when the movie or television camera slowly sweeps the ordered rows of white crosses in a military cemetery where lay the mortal remains of those who died in cruel warfare? Yes, we say that they died for love of country. But did God love them in allowing this violent death to pick them out of the life which was to be lived yet longer by a host of survivors?

A mother, who became accustomed to the wartime bombings that sent British families scurrying for any kind of subterranean shelter that could be found, said that the worst experience for her was not the rain of bombs coming down on a stricken city night after night, but the voice of a child crying, “Mommy, I’m so hungry,” and not even a crust of bread to be given to the little sufferer! And she seriously asked, “Why, God, is you are love, is that possible?”

A young father in our community dies suddenly. It is not a matter of being crushed in some accident, but a matter of being suddenly taken by an ailment that usually attacks only those much older than he. Wife and several small children are left lonely and without his presence and his provision of livelihood. Meanwhile one can think of persons aged, infirm, ailing, who seem to have lived out their lives, some of them actually wishing to be released into eternal rest. And out of the anguish of these reflections, someone says, between clenched teeth, how can a God of love permit this to happen?

1) Of course there are many people on the earth who do not want to believe in a God of love; who do not want, in fact, to believe in God at all. These find the stark fact of suffering on every side a convenient argument to try to dismiss the very thought of God.

2) But there are many more who are sincerely believers, who are yet perplexed and baffled. And the higher becomes our conception or understanding of God, the deeper grow some of their perplexities. Primitive religion may simplify matters. The savage may simply believe in good spirits and bad spirits, and that all that is evil in his life comes from bad spirits, while all that is good in his life comes from good spirits. But when you believe in One God, creator of the Universe, the world, and all that is therein -- creator of all things, of all life, of each person; and that the creator is a God of absolute Love, how can you square that with all that goes on in this world? Well, there are insights in our Christian faith which shed some light on much of our perplexity.

One of them is the understanding that much of the evil and suffering that falls into the life of man is simply the result of man’s own breaking of God’s laws. It is not God’s doing. It is man’s doing. God has written some laws into the universe, among them physical laws. If a workman were to step off the tower of this church, he would land so hard on the concrete sidewalk as to break something in his body. Whether he stepped off purposely or accidentally would make no difference. The law of gravity operates just the same.

God has also written moral laws into the universe. Mankind has the opportunity to learn those laws, and the necessity to obey them. When we break them, we are faced with consequences that must be expected and borne. “Do not be deceived --- for whatsoever a man sows, that he will also reap,” says the Bible. [Galatians 6: 7].

There are laws of heredity that bear out, in sober fact, the ancient Biblical word that God “visits the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generation.” [Deuteronomy 5: 9b]. Whole nations have suffered in similar fashion. Countless Germans suffer for Hitler’s determination to erase the cities of England. And Hitler himself was spawned in the bitterness of an earlier war.

Let no one think that the God of the Christian faith is a kind of sentimental neighbor who is willing to let bygones be bygones; who has to forgive all, because it is his inescapable nature so to do. One fellow remarked cynically that God has to forgive because “That is, after all, his business.” I submit to you the conviction that such a god would not be God anymore. God is the high; God is the perfect; God is the absolute; God is the creator -- not the created. While man may be, and is, bound by the limits of the creation, the Creator is free of any such limitations.

Perhaps all of us have a temptation to think of God as someone who should yield to demands, to requests. If he seems to have been looking the other way, He ought to have his attention called to my misfortune and then, if He is a God of love, will he not remove my misfortune? That frame of mind makes of God a kind of bellboy. When you were established in a city hotel, you seldom thought of the bellhop until you needed him. When you did need him you pressed the button or phoned for him. And you expected him to do your bidding promptly. That is very nearly the attitude that not a few people appear to have about God. They care little about Him until something goes wrong with their life or plans. Then they call on him. And if He does not appear to do their bidding promptly, they say: “I won’t believe in him.”

Let us remember that, with the love of God, there stands the righteousness of God. And back of both stands His own creative nature. But now we come to another difficult question: “If God is love could he not have created for mankind a world without the possibility of man doing evil and wrong; without the possibility of breaking any laws of God and bearing consequences?” It is not too difficult to find an answer to this one. For the possibility of doing wrong, and having to bear the consequence for wrongdoing, is the price that man has to pay for his freedom. If man were without the freedom to choose evil, he would have no liberty at all. In his creating, God did not bring into being a set of puppets. He created people with the freedom to choose good or evil, and the responsibility that rests upon themselves for their choices. Take away the power to choose, and you no longer have liberty. Man has tried this sort of thing in government. But free men draw back in profound mistrust of tyranny when the only was they are permitted to vote is “Ja,” or where no one may vote “Nyet.”

Chesterton once said, “I demand the right to be damned.” That sounds provocative, but it is the very kind of thing we are talking about here. How could we know about a Moses, a Francis of Assisi, a Florence Nightingale; how could we know about a Jesus of Nazareth, unless we also know a Jezebel, a Judas?

Perhaps now, we are getting closer to another angle of the problem. You may have been saying, and rightly, “That may be so, but what about all the suffering that comes into the lives of people which is not a result of their evil choices, sinful deeds, or even of mistaken decisions? To some persons come experiences over which they have no control -- a natural catastrophe, floods, tornadoes, germs. What does sin have to do with the appearance of cancer? How could it be that polio could strike down the only child in one household while, across the street were six children, none of whom was affected? How can a God of love permit that one child and one family to be so stricken?

The answer is not easy, but there is an answer. We may come close by asking ourselves: “What is our highest destiny here on earth? Is it just to live complacent, easy comfortable lives?” Those philosophies which seek no more vigorous purpose to living than the lot of “contented cows” in a lush meadow will have to find their own solution to the problem of suffering. But it will not be a Christian answer. According to Christianity, we are here to grow in understanding, in wisdom, in strength of character, in love, in goodness. And these come, do they not, not so much through ease and comfort as by overcoming obstacles and by overcoming tragedy.

Suppose that God had said to himself: “I shall let no evil, no suffering, ever befall these people whom I am creating. I shall give mankind nothing but health, ease, comfort, pleasure.” That sounds fine, doesn’t it? In fact the idea sounds so good to human ears that the Genesis writers have supposed God originally intended it all to be that way. But the Genesis writers also recognized that God had created man with the gift of choice. And in the use of our choices, we encounter difficulties and reversals with the successes. And both must be accepted as possible, and, when present, as fact.

Without danger, could there be courage? If there were no sickness, could we understand health? Does not life become the sweeter during its span for us because we know it to be different from death? And are not those who face death often led to accept it because life becomes overfilled with suffering and torment? These are some of the answers that suggest themselves to our earnestly inquiring minds. But do these answers satisfy us fully? Do they dissolve the questions? No, they do not! --- at least not for me, nor for many others.

But what of it? I am not God, that I should be able to comprehend the universe in its completion. Nor are you. We see and know in part. We are ever bent on knowing a larger part. If we could in our finiteness understand it all, how small a universe it would be that could be compassed in your understanding, or mine.

The fishermen of a French town say a prayer before putting out to sea about their dangerous work of the day or night. In that prayer are these words: “O God, thy ocean is so great and my boat is so small ...” That is the way we are constrained to think of our capacity to understand or explain the vast mysteries of life. But notice: the fishermen do go out into the deep!

Adolph Harnack, at the end of a long discussion of a difficult philosophical problem, said to his students, “Gentlemen, as we seem to have solved this one problem, I can see at least three new ones opening before us, more difficult than this. In probing the mysteries of the universe and of life, we are like children wading on the shore; the further we walk out, the more we become aware of the depth of the sea. Let us be humble.”

There is a point in history where the dim and dark does become sharper and clearer, and the point to which I refer is Jesus Christ. Love is a personal quality. You never really know what it is on the human level until you experience it in the relation between child and parent, friend and friend, wife and husband. So it is between God and man. The love of God became personalized in the coming of a man, Jesus, to the earth. For some years it was best “shown through” to people in the preservation of Jesus’ life during growing and maturing years at study and carpentry; during quiet days on sunny hills, on stormy seas, in escape from hostile crowds and plotting rascals. But there came the time when the love of God, if it were really to be seen, must be known in the death of that dear son. And when that time came, the blessed Jesus would stoop to no miracle or escape. He walked right up to what he knew must next be the way he would serve God’s will. For God’s will seems to have been to make unmistakably clear to all mankind the absolute and dependable quality of His love.

Do any of us know fully why Jesus of Nazareth had to walk to Jerusalem to a shameful death and an agonizing crucifixion? Do we know why some must face an almost certain end of life in the pain of incurable disease? Do we see why the mother of a murdered child, or the husband of a beloved wife gone demented, must bear that burden? No, we do not know fully. But we begin to know in part. And it helps tremendously to view God’s reflection in the mirror of Christ’s coming to us here on earth.

Christ’s forgiveness, even on the cross, of the plotted evil of his tormentors lights our understanding. His distillation of good even out of the evil of his suffering illuminates our darkness. It leads us even to a perception that the Creator Himself so shares in the suffering of His creatures, that nothing is lost unto Him.

That is why it is possible, in Christ, to discern at the heart of the universe, not cold indifference, nor blind incident, but care, concern, compassion, love. In that assurance we can make our own the words of the teaching apostle Paul: “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 anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” [Romans 8: 38-39].

It is a glory of the Christian faith to be able to hold that conviction in spite of anything that may happen.

AMEN

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Delivered in Wisconsin Rapids, January 27, 1957.

Also at the Wood County Infirmary, February 6, 1957.

Also in Wisconsin Rapids, January 24, 1965.