Who? Not God!

Sometimes when reading a letter that addresses questions or issues that you don't know about you can discern the original issues and questions by extrapolating them from the answers in the letter. I think a lot of that can be done in the book of Romans. In this case there are actually two versions of the original issues and questions and sometimes Paul addresses them separately and sometimes he puts them together. Because at root they spring from the same internal problem – a false picture of God and salvation.

As I look through the last part of chapter 8 I notice a series of questions that indicate there was an issue that Paul wanted to counteract head-on; there were misunderstandings that needed to be rectified. If I condense the phrases down and put them together it becomes more clear. It is in the last section of the chapter that focuses on the love of God and most of the time when people read it they focus on the answers (the love of God) but do not notice that the answers are given to address specific questions with all sorts of underlying assumptions that need to be exposed so that the answers become even more stark and powerful by contrast.

• Who can be against us?

• How shall he not with him also freely give us all things?

• Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God's elect?

• Who is he that condemneth?

• Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?

Paul is trying to reorient our paradigms, our context, our assumptions about what is reality. From this list of questions it looks like those he is writing to (which includes all of us) believed that someone is against us, and that is usually assumed to be God. That is why typical religion works so hard to come up with all sorts of schemes and practices and ideas that we somehow think will change God's mind toward us.

The next question exposes that false assumption even more. It is assumed that God is not very generous, that we have to do things to impress Him so that we can induce Him to bless us or save us. One does not have to look very far at all to see this kind of thinking in religion today.

The typical view of God as a stern judge sitting in austere settings in heaven and constantly looking for any mistakes, discrepancies or sins in our lives is exposed in the next question. Most people believe that the charges against them are coming from God the Father and that His kinder Son Jesus is interceding for us to placate His wrath and somehow appease His justice enough to slip us into paradise.

The next question reinforces that concept by revealing that sinful humans, ever since Adam and Eve cowered in the bushes, have felt that God was condemning them and are afraid to be in His presence. This feeling of condemnation is pervasive and is falsely attributed as to coming from God. But Jesus made it explicitly clear when He talked with Nicodemus that God is not in the business of condemning but of saving.

After all of these lies about God have been exposed for what they really are – blatant, bald-faced misrepresentations of God by his archenemy Satan (which means accuser) – Paul nails down the truth about God by confessing that it is God's passionate, unstoppable, inescapable love that is the true reality and that is our only hope. Furthermore there is simply nothing in the universe outside of our own personal choice that can prevent that love from having its intended results of restoring us into an intimate, fulfilling relationship with our Creator.

This truth about God's real attitude toward us in contrast with the lies purported by both open sinners and religious sinners is the gospel, the good news that has within it the power to save us. (Romans 1:16,17) Remember, the word “save” which comes from “salvation”, means to restore to original condition, to heal, to repair. As we allow our hearts and minds to be filled and empowered and excited by the reality of the love that God always has toward us and we let go of our lies about Him we will begin to experience the transforming process of restoration and healing that is inevitable in the atmosphere of perfect love.

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