How many times per day do you need to tell yourself the truth?
By “truth”, I mean this truth:
What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? -Romans 8:31
Romans, in its back-and-forth Paul-questioning-himself format, sums up the gospel in a hundred tidy little ways, but this truth—that God is for us and therefore nothing can be against us—knocks the ball out of the ballpark, doesn’t it?
It’s a biblical mic drop to end all mic drops.
Idioms aside, we really need to take a look at Paul’s letter to the Romans with fresh eyes these days. Your year may feel as embattled as mine, because in addition to the personal hardships and hurdles, we have this shared suffering that is a pandemic. We can go to bed every night convinced that God and everyone are against us.
But that’s not the truth.
I’ve had the privilege of listening to a hundred stories over the past few years because I wrote a book about our journey into and through hyper-religion, and so when I’ve been invited to tell our story, I get to hear your stories, too. Boy, if you ever want to believe you’re not alone, tell your story.
What I’ve learned is that hands-down, 100% of the time, we just cannot believe that God is for us. Our biggest sin and deepest struggle is that we just don’t believe how much God loves us.
But that’s the truth.
You will know the truth when you read his words, like these:
For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. -Romans 5:6, English Standard Version
Those words also read like this:
When we were utterly helpless, with no way of escape, Christ came at just the right time and died for us sinners who had no use for him. -Romans 5:6, The Living Bible
And this:
Christ arrives right on time to make this happen. He didn’t, and doesn’t, wait for us to get ready. He presented himself for this sacrificial death when we were far too weak and rebellious to do anything to get ourselves ready. -Romans 5:6, The Message
Christ arrived. We didn’t know we needed him. He didn’t make us do anything. He just loved us. That’s the truth. If there were ever an illustration of how much God loves us and that we don’t need to clean up, “get right” with him, act all religious, be a good person, try real hard, and rescue puppies to make him like us, the books of Romans is it.
You can lay down your hurt. You can talk to your fear. We can come back to the truth every morning and remember that he loves us, period. In a world that expects some sort of economic return, it’s a truth beyond our understanding. But then, what kind of supernatural love would it be if we could comprehend?
Just believe. You can ask God to help you believe it and he will. It’s the truth. And we couldn’t ever be good enough to earn the love of God, anyway.
