God’s love
- Posted on 3rd August 2017
- in Sermons
- by Elizabeth Gibbs
Talk at All Age Worship service by Neil Dodgson on 2 July 2017
Nothing can separate us from the love of God. (Romans 8:31–39)
I want to talk for a few minutes to the youth and adults. We’ve already thought about the things that we might think can separate us from the Love of God. The questions now are: why is Paul the Apostle so adamant that nothing can separate us from God’s love and what does this actually mean for us here in Wellington as we go out into our normal daily lives with all of their attendant stresses and challenges.
So first, let’s think about what we mean by love. Love is a funny word. Think about it. It is used to mean so many different things.
Is it a husband’s love for his wife?
A mother’s love for her child?
A child’s love for her Grandma?
Is it that romantic love that you’ll see in a movie?
Or that heady, head-over-heels, stomach-churning feeling of ‘falling in love’?
Or the mature love of a couple approaching their 60th wedding anniversary?
Is it wider than that?
Do you love your best friend?
In the army, could you say that the members of a squad love one another? They will certainly lay down their lives for one another? Isn’t that a measure of love? They might not think so!
And which of these is like God’s love for us?
English is so limited, using one word to mean so many things.
If we switch to Maori, we all know the Maori word for love: aroha. But translate it back to English and, depending on context, you could mean love, affection, charity, compassion, empathy, tenderness, or a deep sustaining love. So English does have lots of words that dance around this concept of love. Which of these is God’s love: Charity? Empathy? Deep sustaining love?
I’ll tell you one thing that it isn’t: romantic love.
Maori actually has a separate word, ipo, for romantic love.
If you go to New Testament Greek, the language is even richer. You’ll find four words for love. Like Maori, there’s a word for romantic love: the head-over-heels cannot-think-of-anyone else love that is so powerful in bringing couples together. But there is separate word for the sustaining love that endures through a lifetime, for the love a parent has for a child, or the love that supports a married couple through thick and thin. That is the sort of love that romance naturally turns into if it is to last for years: the love that comes from much time spent together and much energy expended on one another.
Is that God’s love, a sustaining love that comes from knowing someone else deeply and thoroughly, like a parent for a child, or a husband for a wife?
No. Greek has yet a third word, agapé, for God’s love. A selfless, unconditional love that gives without expecting anything back and that continues regardless of the response. It is that love that Christians strive to show and that love that God gives freely to all.
Youth group: Your homework is to go find out about the fourth Greek word for love, what it is and what it means.
Earlier in the service we all thought about things that might be thought to separate us from God. In the reading at the start of the service, Paul the Apostle gives a list of seven things that might be thought to separate us from the love of God.
Trouble, hardship, persecution, famine, nakedness, danger, sword
He builds up from things that we all face to things that we hope we will never have to face.
Trouble and hardship – we can all relate to these.
Persecution – some of us have faced persecution
Famine and nakedness – I imagine that almost none of us have faced life where we have no food or no clothing
Danger andsword – Have any of us been in a position where our lives are physically at risk?
But, regardless of how commonplace or rare, none of these examples have the power to separate us from the Love of God.
Why is Paul so sure of this? To paraphrase him: Who could possibly have the power to separate us from God’s Love? Well clearly God could. Would God do so. Of course not. He is the One who acted to rectify our relationship with Himself! So not God then. Who else is there who could possibly separate us from God’s love? Will it be Jesus? No! Jesus is the one who died for us, who God raised to life for us, who sits at God’s right hand and actually intercedes for us.
This argument shows that the only Ones who have the power to accuse or condemn us — God or his Son Jesus — are exactly the Ones who protect us. You cannot beat God — if he is for you, nothing can stand against you. It is the fundamental cornerstone of our belief that God proves that He is for you by sending his Son to die and be raised to life.
Paul says:
I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, not any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate use from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Paul is listing categories of creation — both natural and supernatural — that, in his understanding of the world, might be considered candidates for exercising power over us. But there is nothing, nothing, absolutely nothing that is more powerful than God’s will. And it is God’s will that you be recovered, redeemed, and loved. Nothing that happens in your life can have any negative effect on God’s loving care for you.
That’s all very nice. But what does is mean in practice for us, as we go out into our daily lives?
Paul Achtemeier, the Bible commentator (from whom some of the above is borrowed) has this to say to us:
Perhaps the greatest comfort here lies in the fact the we too are creatures. If nothing in all creation can separate us from God’s love then, in the end, even our own almost limitless ability to rebel against God is overcome; and we are saved from our own greatest enemy, ourselves.
Or, to put it another way, there is nothing that you can do that will stop God from loving you. Think about your own parents. Think about the times you made them angry, that you upset them, that you rebelled against them. For the most part your parents continue to love you despite what you do. And then remember that your parents are fallible human beings, whereas God is God. You cannot stop God from loving you.
But you say, that is all very well, God loves me, but things still go wrong. Of course they do. To think otherwise would be childish. Bad things do happen. Paul does not say: there will be no trouble, no hardship, no persecution. What he says instead is that despite trouble, despite hardship, despite persecution, nothing can separate you from God’s love. While the things that happen may be truly horrific, they do not define you and they certainly do not define God’s relationship with you. These things are temporary. They mean that you live in this imperfect, fallen and flawed world. There is a greater, permanent, reality to which you can hold when things go pear shaped. We are redeemed but the world is not yet. Hence the tension. Hence our need to know we are loved despite what happens.
To conclude, I want to quote from Henri Nouwen’s book, Return of the Prodigal Son. He writes:
When Jesus speaks about the world, he is very realistic. He speaks about wars and revolutions, earthquakes, plagues and famines, persecution and imprisonment, betrayal, hatred and assassinations. There is no suggestion at all that these signs of the world’s darkness will ever be absent. But still, God’s joy can be ours in the midst of it all. It is the joy of belonging to the household of God whose love is stronger than death and who empowers us to be in the world while already belonging to the kingdom of joy.
Nothing can separate us from the love of God.
Amen.
Tags: All Age worship, Guest preacher, July 2017, Neil Dodgson
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