Someone said to me today, “I’m having a really hard time seeing God’s hand in this.” The person was dealing with family issues that have no clear pathway to healing, no obvious route to resolution and peace. I sympathize. Such depth of interpersonal pain does make one question God’s activity and plan in it all.
Yet in our text for this Sunday, Romans 8:26-39, Paul sums up his whole argument regarding the work of God’s righteousness in a glorious expression of confidence and trust in what God is doing.
We’re starting with a couple verses, 26 and 27, which may seem like they better belong with what has gone before, because they pick up the theme of the work of the Spirit and inward groaning which was expressed in verse 23. Yet connecting these verses about the intercession of the Spirit when we don’t even know how to pray, makes the affirmation of verse 28 that much more powerful, “We know that things work together for good for those who love God. . .”
A comment by St. Chrysostom is apt: “When Paul speaks of all things he mentions even the things that seem painful.” Even that which seems as though it can’t be the hand of God are being worked together by the hand of God for our good.
I haven’t read the Rob Bell book Love Wins. It’s one of those volumes which you feel like you’ve read even if you haven’t, just because so many people are talking about it. His title might be a good title for this text, but I’m not sure the slant is the same. As near as I can make out, Bell wants to explore the possibility that God’s love wins over even those who don’t love Him. It’s certainly a possibility to be explored biblically and theologically.
However the point of our text is that the love of God triumphs in the lives of those who do love God, triumphs even over circumstances and powers which might seem to separate from His love. God’s love may be victorious over us, but it is clearly victorious for us when by the grace of Christ we love Him.
The love of God is demonstrated, as Paul has already made clear in chapter 5, in the work of Christ. God gave up His Son. God made us righteous through His Son. God raised His Son from the dead. All of it is on our behalf, out of love. How can we suppose, then, that that same love will be anything but victorious over whatever hard and painful circumstances we find ourselves in?
My prayer for anyone who reads this is the same as it was for the one who told me today how hard it is to see God at work. May you feel the love of God in and through it all, the love in and by which Christ suffered, died and rose again. That kind of love can’t help but be victorious.