First Lutheran Church, Detroit Lakes, MN
Pentecost 8 | 07.26.2020 | Romans 8:31-39 (+ Romans 7)
The passage that was just read from Romans 8, written by the Apostle Paul, is one of the most powerful expressions of God’s love in all of Scripture. In fact, Romans 8 is one of the pivotal reasons that I am even a Christian, and, particularly, a Lutheran.
In the 8th chapter of Romans, shocking levels of God’s grace and love are proclaimed. Now, this proclamation allows Romans 8 to stand on its own, you can pluck it right out and it’s still really meaningful and powerful, but what might make it even more powerful is its context; that is, particularly, what Paul says just beforehand.
In Romans 7, Paul gives a really relatable venting about his own imperfection, about his repeated behaviors that are destructive and not helpful. I’ll read some of this relatable struggle:
*15I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate…19For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do… 24Wretched man that I am!
This is Paul’s inner conflict where on a daily basis he knows he needs to do and be better in loving God and neighbor, but struggles. I mean, can we not all understand that struggle? Isn’t fascinating that we can have the awareness of our own destructive behaviors, and even the desire to stop them, and yet we can’t do it perfectly? So often and over and over again, we know what is not right, and we do it anyway.
Paul is naming the continual struggle of sin – our inescapable nature, our condition, that results daily in actions from petty self-absorption, to actions that downright damage our relationships, our neighbor, and the world. We are never able to completely avoid our brokenness altogether or its consequences. Let’s call this the “Romans 7 struggle.”
When I think of this struggle for myself there are infinite examples. I’ll give you one, and it’s a trivial and petty one, but I do think its trivial nature speaks volumes. The example?—me on a golf course. Golf exposes my Romans 7 struggle.
For instance, I have the audacity on a golf course to get angry when I know—rationally—that it is utterly ridiculous to get mad on a golf course.
I’m a little better now, but if you would have seen me even 8-9 years ago, if you would have witnessed me missing a four-foot putt to save par, let’s just say that you would have withheld your letter of call for me.
It’d be a beautiful Wednesday afternoon where I am playing golf with my dad when I know full well how lucky I am to be playing golf with my dad, especially when there are those who would give anything to do anything one more time with their father; in the moment I know full well how lucky I am to be playing a luxury sport when there are people clocking in for their second and third job of the day while I’m teeing off; when I know full well how lucky I am to be playing when there are people in the world fleeing war-torn or famished homelands…and I have the audacity to get mad when playing a game?—the results of which are completely meaningless!? 15I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want…I do not do the good I want, but [what] I do not want is what I do.
The Romans 7 struggle. Fully aware, I cannot rise above my brokenness.
That’s one of my billion examples of inner-struggle, and now I want you to take a moment to think about yours, about your Romans 7 struggles—the things you know not to do, the things you know are not helpful, yet you continue in the pattern: is it gossip, bitterness, vanity, impatience, disloyalty, judging others, not being as generous as you know you should be, jealousy, blaming everyone but yourself, ignoring suffering of others, greed, violence?—the things that we know not to do, and we do them anyway. Excruciatingly, we’re unable to rise above and we repeat destructive behaviors over and over again. It’s exhausting and makes us want to just give up on ourselves. As Paul says, “Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?” (v. 24).
And…here comes Romans 8, into this struggle, a proclamation of a God whose love refuses to give up on us; a proclamation that can finally interrupt inner-cynicism and breathe new life and hope into our day-in, day-out struggles.
As you ponder your Romans 7 struggles, my friends, NOW, hear Romans 8:
*35Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress…or peril…?
37No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, 39nor 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 8:35, 37-39).
NOTHING can separate you from the love of God. This gracious acceptance by God is that which finally interrupts our Romans 7 conniptions and makes us new.
Yes, each of us has done what we know we should not have done. Each of us has caused hurt and pain. Each of us has left things undone that we should have completed. And those facts haunt us in the forms of guilt, or shame, or helplessness.
And you know what, Paul reminds us, you are still loved. You are still accepted. You are set free. You are made new in the love of Christ to whom you belong, inseparably.
Our struggle with sin is real, and yet, what God has done in Christ Jesus will never be undone. We are broken, but remember, says one scholar, “God is [still] on humanity’s side.”[1] As it is proclaimed in one of our historical Lutheran documents: “this salvation…cannot fail or be overthrown.”[2] We are not able to escape the cycles of sin that bind us, but neither can we escape God’s love.
So, into your shame, guilt, and Romans 7 struggles that all weigh heavy and recycle destructive behaviors, hear it again: NOTHING can separate you from God’s love. Not our failures, not our limitations, not our sin. Let that sink in—NOTHING.
Breathe in that grace and exhale into the new life and new days that come with it. You are made new. From our struggles we rise again daily with God’s grace – freed…to serve our neighbor more boldly, love more fully, and live more freely. Amen.
[1] Walter Brueggemann, Charles B. Cousar, Beverly R. Gaventa, Jr., James D. Newsome, Texts for Preaching: A Lectionary Commentary Based on the NRSV—Year A (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1995), 421-422.
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