Three Ways God is For Us, Part Three

“If I could hear Christ praying for me in the next room, I would not fear a million enemies. Yet distance makes no difference. He is praying for me!” So said Robert Murray McCheyne, the Scottish preacher, pastor, and poet.

This is the third (and last) post on why "God is for us." I said last time, God is for us by satisfying justice and declaring us "innocent!" As Paul put it in Romans 8:33, Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies.

The next verse in Romans 8 takes the thought a step further: but would it be possible not only to bring a charge against you, but actually to condemn you? Should you worry about a future where, despite your faith in Christ now, your sins catch up to you and you end up in hell?

Scripture’s answer is to point to Jesus. Yes, God is the one who justifies (v. 33). Justification stresses how justice is satisfied by Christ’s perfect obedience and infinitely valuable death. But don’t think only of Good Friday. Remember Resurrection Sunday. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us (Romans 8:34).

Three Ways God is For Us, Part Two

If you were really confident that the God of heaven was on your side, is there any challenge you could not overcome? If you truly believed that the Lord of the universe was for you, any trouble or heartache or setback would be small in comparison.

So this is the second of three posts where I’m hoping to show how God is for us. I’m writing for people who are already Christians, but also with the hope that anyone who isn't yet a follower might be encouraged to become one.

Romans 8:32 was where I started last time, to say that God is for us because of the sacrifice of His Son. He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? The very next verse offers a second way in which God is for us: By Satisfying Justice and Declaring Us “Innocent!” Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies (Romans 8:33).

We admit there are charges that come against us. Satan himself is called the accuser of the brethren (Revelation 12:10), and he is relentless to remind us of our sin.

Other charges come from people who blame us, fairly or unfairly, for ways we have failed them. And then we have charges that well up within us. Old tapes play in our minds, messages from our past that pronounce judgment upon our present and our future.

Three Ways God is For Us, Part One

I’ve been a Christian a really long time – since I was 15 – and yet there are days when I feel alone, as if God has forgotten about me. Maybe you feel that way sometimes, too.

For me, it’s not wise to trust my feelings when I feel this way. Actually trusting one’s feelings isn’t so smart at any time. Our feelings are a barometer for lots of things – what we ate for dinner, illness, the music we’ve been listening to, the mood of others, even our own sin. But our feelings are not a reliable indicator of what’s really true.

So as a Christian I’m better off to come to the Scriptures to determine what’s true. If I feel God has somehow forgotten about me, it’s just not true. He hasn’t. And His attention to my life is written all over the Bible, practically on every page.

For example, the eighth chapter of the book of Romans. I’ve looked into Romans 8 twice in two recent series of posts, and I’d like to do another short series, based on the question Paul asks in Romans 8:31: What shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who is against us? 

Now to be honest, it might feel like plenty of things are “against us.” Satan, evil people, a bad economy, even our own sin nature. But the point of the question is, if the God of heaven is on our side, committed to our good, then how can anything or anybody win? How can they be against us successfully? The answer is, they can’t!

The first way we know God is for us is An Unthinkable Sacrifice - He gave up His own Son. He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? Romans 8:32 

The sacrifice of Jesus is described two ways – negatively, what the Father did not do: “He did not spare his own Son.” And positively, what He did do: “but gave him up for us all.”