“The Inseparable Love of God”
Preached Sunday, July 30, 2023
Today’s Scripture passage is my favorite Scripture ever - it’s hard to narrow it down, asking a pastor their favorite Scripture passage is like asking a librarian what their favorite book is or a musician what their favorite song is…but, this passage from Romans 8 is my favorite. AND, believe it or not, I have never preached on it outside of a funeral. I estimate that I have preached somewhere between 300 and 350 sermons on Sunday mornings - and I have never preached on my favorite passage of Scripture on a Sunday morning. So am I going to give it justice this morning? Probably not! And that’s not a deficit of my preaching but because ALL language fails at capturing the fullness of God’s love - and we are going to try anyway.
So specifically my favorite Bible verses from the passage that we’re going to focus on today are verses 38-39: “For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, 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.”
Now, a couple weeks ago we talked about prevenient grace. A reminder for those who heard that sermon and a brief summary for those who didn’t: Prevenient grace is the grace that comes before we know there is grace to be had. It is the Holy Spirit who is constantly whispering in your ear and the ear of everyone ever born: “I love you.” Even if we don’t hear it, even if we don’t pay that voice any heed - God is ALWAYS saying to us, “I love you.” That voice is always there. Cause God is always offering us grace, extending a hand, telling us that we are loved by the God who is Love.
And then, I very briefly talked about these other kinds of grace - justifying and sanctifying. And we’re gonna delve deeper into justifying grace today. And if prevenient grace is the Holy Spirit constantly whispering in your ear, “I love you.” Then justifying grace is when you hear that voice of Love whispering to you and you know in your heart and mind that you know that you know that you know that God loves you - yes even you!
Our call to worship this morning had repeat-after-me affirmations so let’s continue that, repeat this after me: “God loves me!” (“God loves me!”) Repeat again: “Yes, even me!” (“Yes, even me!”)
Okay, don’t repeat this next part.
This justifying grace, this realization that you know that you know that you know that God loves you, yes, even you! This justifying grace can happen in a singular moment - and many do point to this moment of justifying grace as a moment of conversion, where the love of God hit them over the head like a bag of bricks, or like an arrow straight through the heart, where in a moment, the shock of the realization of God’s love changed them. So some point to a moment of conversion. And still, for many, justifying grace, can come over many moments of time, where the knowledge of the love of God takes time to seep into our bones and into our souls - less like a moment where we are hit with a sack of bricks and more like your body absorbing the nutrients in vitamins, a medicine slowly working, or a good cup of tea steeping - it takes times but it is justifying grace and realizing God’s love for us nonetheless.
And so now, I want to tell you a story about a man named John Wesley. If you are a regular here or were ever a regular at a United Methodist Church, you’ve probably heard about him before. He is attributed to be the founder of the Methodist movement through which we derive. So John Wesley was born in 1701 and his dad was an Anglican minister and his mom was a strong woman of faith who taught and preached out of her own home. And in 1728, at 27 years old - how old I was when I was commissioned as a United Methodist minister - John Wesley was ordained a priest. He was a student and then taught at Oxford and he started a group called the Holy Club which was made up of individuals who wanted to become better Christians. They prayed multiple times a day, they read Scripture together, they visited orphans and those in prison, they took Communion whenever they could, they kept detailed journals to document their spiritual progress, they held each other accountable and talked about their faith….and still, John had the head knowledge of Christ’s love for him…and he often struggled with the heart knowledge of that love. He was so rigorous in his living out his Christian life cause he just wanted to KNOW that he was doing all he could, that he was doing enough, that he was enough… He struggled with what he called the assurance of his salvation. How could he really know that he was saved? That he was right by God? And so John really wanted to become a missionary to America and so in 1735, he sailed to the colony of Georgia to be a pastor at Christ Church in Savannah. And it is not a stretch to say that he failed as a missionary and a pastor - he was there 3 years - the first short term Methodist appointment - and he actually left undercover of night, escaping a court date and a warrant for his arrest for a sticky situation he got himself into with a spurned lover, refusing communion, and a judge who was on the take by his basically ex-girlfriend’s family. The whole thing was a mess! And when John returned to England, basically in shame and shambles in 1738, he was at a low point, mentally and spiritually. And it was then, on May 24, 1738 that he said he went unwillingly to a Bible study on Aldersgate Street. He wasn’t feeling it but he dragged himself there. And then, while listening to Luther’s Preface to the Book of Romans, he heard that voice of the Holy Spirit whispering in his ear, “I love you” and he knew that he knew that he knew that God loved him. The knowledge that he had known in his head, made his way to his heart. That night he wrote in his journal: "while he was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone for salvation; and an assurance was given me that He had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death." He then, in his journals, attributed that moment to the knowledge of the love of God strangely warming his heart. Although later in his life he would realize that his justifying experience was more than just that moment on what has been come to be known as Aldersgate Day - it was his whole life up to that point, the love of God, working on him, shaping him, until that moment when he realized that it had made its way from his head to his heart.
I love what Wesley says, “He had taken away my sins…even mine!!!” That’s like “God loves me…yes, even me!” Can you believe it? For John Wesley had been preaching the love of God all his life up to that point and he had been doing all he could to prove to HIMSELF that he was worthy of God’s love and when his heart was strangely warmed he realized that he didn’t have to do anything to prove himself - that God forgave him, yes, even him! And that God loved him, yes, even him!
John knew in his heart and mind, he knew that he knew that he knew that God loved him…and he was forever changed, strengthened, and emboldened for how he would go on and continue to serve God with his life.
So now let’s bring this back to my favorite verse in Scripture: “For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, 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.”
Do you know that you know that you know that you are loved by God?
Do you know in your mind and heart that you are loved by God?
Do you KNOW that God loves you, yes, even YOU! AND, do you know that NOTHING can separate you from that Love?
Nothing can separate you, nothing can separate me, nothing can separate any of us from the Love of Christ Jesus, our Lord. Nothing! …Now, when I say, do you know this? I mean, do we really live with this knowledge? Do we really live into this knowledge? Do we let this knowledge change everything? That NOTHING can separate us from the love of God.
Or…are you living in fear of hell-fire?
Are you walking on eggshells with God?
Are you trying to force yourself into a box to be someone other than who God created you to be?
Are you trying to prove to yourself, to others, to God, that you are good enough, worthy-enough, deserving of love?
Are you living with this sense that you are not enough and will never be enough?
And…even if you are - none of that will separate you - or anyone - from God! And, it’s not the full-life that God wants for us.
Because God LOVES you and NOTHING, absolutely nothing's gonna change that.
As our Scripture says: not hardship, not distress, not persecution, not famine, not nakedness, not peril, not sword, not death, not life, not angels, not rulers, not things present, not things to come, not powers, not height, not depth, not anything else in all creation - NOTHING can or will separate us from the love of Christ.
Not mental illness, not physical illness, not pain, not grief, not addiction, not exhaustion, not what we do or what we don’t do, not economic hardship, not strained or broken relationships, not self-doubt, not low self-esteem, not your failures, not your short-comings, not, not, not, not… I could exhaust my voice before I exhausted the list of what WILL NOT separate us from the Love of God, cause there is nothing in all of creation - NOTHING, can separate us from the love of God. Not even sin! In Luther’s preface to the letter of Romans, what John Wesley heard that night his heart was strangely warmed, Luther writes: “The Holy Spirit assures us that we are God's children no matter how furiously sin may rage within us…” Again, nothing can separate us from the love of God.
Now, some have interpreted this as a free-pass, if God loves me no matter what, if God is going to forgive me for anything as long as I ask for forgiveness, then I can do whatever the heck I want…and, that’s not it, fam. My response to that is: If you know that you know that you know that God loves you. If you know this love in your heart and your mind. If your heart has been strangely warmed…then that Love changes you. That Love shapes you. That Love transforms you - heart and mind, when you KNOW that you are loved by God and there is nothing you can do about it - you then start to act out of that love. You might mess up and at times you may even forget that bone-deep, soul-deep knowledge that God loves you - and so, in those slip-ups, in those forgetful moments, we sin, we fall short, we mess-up…and, even that, doesn't separate us from the Love of God - cause nothing can.
Let’s do that repeat after me affirmation one more time. Repeat after me: “God loves me!” (“God loves me!”) “Yes, even me!” (“Yes, even me!”) “And there is nothing gonna change that!” (“And there is nothing gonna change that!”)
If I hounded on this point of God’s love today, it’s because this cannot be overstated. It is one of the most powerful passages of Scripture, because when we really know this in our hearts and mind, when we *know* that God loves us, no matter what, it changes everything.
So know that you are loved by God and go and live a life that reflects that Love.
Amen.
Because God LOVES you and NOTHING, absolutely nothing's gonna change that.
As our Scripture says: not hardship, not distress, not persecution, not famine, not nakedness, not peril, not sword, not death, not life, not angels, not rulers, not things present, not things to come, not powers, not height, not depth, not anything else in all creation - NOTHING can or will separate us from the love of Christ.
Not mental illness, not physical illness, not pain, not grief, not addiction, not exhaustion, not what we do or what we don’t do, not economic hardship, not strained or broken relationships, not self-doubt, not low self-esteem, not your failures, not your short-comings, not, not, not, not… I could exhaust my voice before I exhausted the list of what WILL NOT separate us from the Love of God, cause there is nothing in all of creation - NOTHING, can separate us from the love of God. Not even sin! In Luther’s preface to the letter of Romans, what John Wesley heard that night his heart was strangely warmed, Luther writes: “The Holy Spirit assures us that we are God's children no matter how furiously sin may rage within us…” Again, nothing can separate us from the love of God.
Now, some have interpreted this as a free-pass, if God loves me no matter what, if God is going to forgive me for anything as long as I ask for forgiveness, then I can do whatever the heck I want…and, that’s not it, fam. My response to that is: If you know that you know that you know that God loves you. If you know this love in your heart and your mind. If your heart has been strangely warmed…then that Love changes you. That Love shapes you. That Love transforms you - heart and mind, when you KNOW that you are loved by God and there is nothing you can do about it - you then start to act out of that love. You might mess up and at times you may even forget that bone-deep, soul-deep knowledge that God loves you - and so, in those slip-ups, in those forgetful moments, we sin, we fall short, we mess-up…and, even that, doesn't separate us from the Love of God - cause nothing can.
Let’s do that repeat after me affirmation one more time. Repeat after me: “God loves me!” (“God loves me!”) “Yes, even me!” (“Yes, even me!”) “And there is nothing gonna change that!” (“And there is nothing gonna change that!”)
If I hounded on this point of God’s love today, it’s because this cannot be overstated. It is one of the most powerful passages of Scripture, because when we really know this in our hearts and mind, when we *know* that God loves us, no matter what, it changes everything.
So know that you are loved by God and go and live a life that reflects that Love.
Amen.
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