God is Committed to You

God is Committed to You

The fable of The Chicken and The Pig is a great analogy to illustrate commitment. When making a breakfast of bacon and eggs, the pig provides the bacon, which requires that the pig sacrifice his life. The chicken provides the eggs, which are not at all difficult for a chicken to produce because it does not involve the sacrifice of life. Both the pig and the chicken are needed to make the breakfast; however, in the analogy, the chicken is only involved, but the pig is committed.

How do you know when someone is committed? Commitment goes beyond words. Commitment shows up in actions. If you tell me you are committed

to our relationship, yet you spend no time with me, you’d be hard pressed to

convince me of your commitment.

Commitment doesn’t have levels. It is total. I asked someone recently if

they trusted another person. They went into what they thought was a sophisticated discussion of the levels of trust. I thought their discussion was

the exact thinking Satan sponsors. With Satan, everything is equivocation… the sliding around of a slippery snail…never really answering a question…

never really revealing his treacherous hand. With God, everything is black and white…you either trust or you don’t. So it is with commitment. You are either committed or you aren’t. When you are committed, you are naked and in the pool; when you are not committed, you merely have your toe in the water.

God is committed to you. When God says He is FOR you…if you want to believe Him, what you would look for is all the things He does for you that

indicate commitment…like Romans, Chapter 8, Verse 32a…

Romans 8:32

God the Father, who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him over for

us all…

Is that commitment? You bet it is…and in today’s lesson we’ll see just how deep God’s commitment to you goes. Welcome to a place where you can learn about how committed your God is to you.

OPENING PRAYER

Let us pray...

We’re grateful, Heavenly Father, for the privilege of studying Your absolute truth...the Word of God…

Father, thank you for your commitment to Your creatures…because You are fully committed to us, and because we know You are…we are free to relax and to rest in Your care…thank you for considering our problems to be Your responsibility, especially the ones we can do nothing about…the ones where human power just isn’t good enough…thank you for putting us in a position where we have to depend totally on You over and over again…thank you for being a trustworthy place for our faith…

Teach us commitment…show us how to imitate Your commitment. Especially in the matter of life’s enduring values…grace, forgiveness, and unconditional love…

We ask this through the power of God the Holy Spirit…in Christ’s name...

Amen.

TODAY’S BIBLE LESSON

God is Committed to You

We continue our study of the final passage in Romans, Chapter 8, which extends from Verse 31 to Verse 39…here it is…

Romans 8:31

What then shall we believers in Christ say face-to-face with all these things? If God the Father is for us, and He is, who is ever going to be successful in opposition against us?

Romans 8:32

God the Father, who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him over for us all, how will the Father not also, with our union with Christ, freely give us all things?

Romans 8:33

Who will bring a successful charge against God’s elect (all believers in Christ)? God is the one who justifies…

Romans 8:34

…who is the one who condemns? Christ Jesus is He who died, yes, rather He who was raised…He who is at the right hand of God the Father…He

who also intercedes for us.

Romans 8:35

Who will separate us from the unconditional love of Christ? Will tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword separate us from His unconditional love?

Romans 8:36

Just as it is written, “For Your sake we are being put to death all day long; we were considered as sheep to be slaughtered.”

Romans 8:37

But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us.

Romans 8:38

For I (Paul) am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor

principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers…

Romans 8:39

…nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate

us from the unconditional love of God the Father, which is for us through our union with Christ Jesus our Lord.

PAUL’S QUESTIONS TO BELIEVERS IN CHRIST

What then shall we believers in Christ say face-to-face with all these things?

If God the Father is for us, and He is, who is ever going to be successful in opposition against us?

How will the Father not also, with our union with Christ, freely give us all things?

God is telling us clearly, through Paul, that He has nothing against us. In other words…God is on your side…God is FOR you. So when you experience personal trauma, there is no need to faint in your souls or to

collapse with fear as if the thing you are experiencing isn’t just EXACTLY

what God knew, in His omniscience, that you would experience a billion years ago. God is not working all things together for good for everyone except you!

The proof that God is on your side comes in Romans, Chapter 8, Verse 32,

where God says to us…“If I am able and willing to do the hardest thing for you…which is standing by and watching as my Son is mutilated by sinners on your behalf…then you have to know that I am MUCH MORE able and

MUCH MORE willing to do the simple things for you, whatever they

happen to be.”

Those simple things that God is willing to do for us don’t really seem simple to us as we are going through them…as one of my favorite poems says…at those times when the funds are low and the debts are high and you want to

smile but you have to sigh…the times when your cares are pressing you

down a bit.

The simple things to God were things like reconciliation…

RECONCILIATION To cause someone or something to conform to a standard

The Lord Jesus Christ went to a Cross to make possible your reconciliation with God the Father… shedding His blood for you…and this shed blood gives you the chance to have an intimate relationship with God…

The simple things to God are things like redemption…The Lord Jesus Christ…the One who is FOR us…is the Redeemer of the whole world.

What does it mean to redeem?

REDEEM The act of setting free…the process of liberating someone

J. DWIGHT PENTECOST ON REDEMPTION

The Word of God looks upon men who are in sin as bond-slaves. It looks upon them as being under a master who has conquered and subdued them, and who can deliver them over to even greater bondage. The Scripture views the sinner as without any will of his own, indentured to serve sin and to be a bond-slave of Satan, to do whatsoever Satan demands. Jesus Christ has come into that slave market in order that He might purchase those who are in sin’s chains, so that He might set them free.

J. DWIGHT PENTECOST ON REDEMPTION

We will never be able to praise our Redeemer for His redemption until we understand our condition in sin, our need of redemption, the cost of redemption, and the deliverance that has been afforded us by the Redeemer.

The next two verses in our passage are Romans, Chapter 8, Verses 33 and

34…

Romans 8:33

Who will bring a successful charge against God’s elect (all believers in Christ)? God is the one who justifies…

Romans 8:34

…who is the one who condemns? Christ Jesus is He…the One who died, yes, rather He who was raised from the dead…He who is at the right hand of God the Father…He who also intercedes for us.

Let’s take a short music break and we’ll learn more about these verses.

God is Committed to You

Romans 8:33

Who will bring a successful charge against God’s elect (all believers in Christ)? God is the one who justifies…

Paul’s next two rhetorical questions for believers in Christ…

PAUL’S NEXT QUESTION TO BELIEVERS IN CHRIST

Who will bring a successful charge against God’s elect?

God is the One who justifies…who is the One who will condemn?

When you know that God is on your side…when you know that God is FOR you…it breeds confidence. Who are God’s elect? You are, as one of His believers in Christ! What does it mean to “bring a successful charge against?” It means to press charges against someone in front of a judge.

Who is the judge in front of whom charges are brought against you?

Revelation, Chapter 19, Verse 11…

Revelation 19:11

And I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse, and He (the Lord Jesus Christ) who sat on it is called the Faithful and True One, and in righteousness Christ judges and wages war.

The Lord Jesus Christ, your Savior, is the Righteous Judge…the Lord…the

One who is TOTALLY COMMITTED to you. How pointless it is to press charges against someone who has been vindicated, in front of the very Person, the very judge who vindicated them…in other words, no charges against a believer in Christ will ever stick. Revelation, Chapter 12, Verse 10

says…

Revelation 12:10

Then I heard a loud voice in heaven, saying, “Now the salvation, and the

power, and the kingdom of our God and the authority of His Christ have come, for the accuser of our brethren (Satan) has been thrown down (expelled from heaven), he who accuses believers in Christ before our God day and night.

What a waste of time for Satan to accuse the unaccusable. But then, Satan never learns. Satan enjoys what appear to be his victories…when he sees believers stricken…only to find that the Lord vindicates them and lifts them up with His righteous right hand. Psalm 23, Verse 5a…

Psalm 23:5a

You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies…

In spite of impeding danger, the Lord is always ready, willing and able to provide for and to protect His believers. So what we learn in Romans, Chapter 8, Verse 33 is that believers in Christ have the spiritual equivalent of diplomatic immunity…a full presidential pardon for any crimes committed…anyone who is justified by the Sovereign of the Universe, the Lord Jesus Christ, cannot be condemned by anyone. What does it mean to condemn?

Condemn To pronounce a sentence against someone after the determination of guilt

We may be condemned in our conscious…but we are not condemned in court. Remember what we learned at the end of Romans, Chapter 7 and at the beginning of Romans Chapter 8? Who will deliver us?

Romans 7:24

Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from the body of this death?

Romans 7:25

Thanks be to God the Father through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, on the one hand I myself with my mind am serving the law of God, but on the other, with my flesh the law of sin.

Romans 8:1

Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in union with Christ Jesus.

Romans, Chapter 8, Verse 34…

Romans 8:34

…who is the one who condemns? Christ Jesus is He…the One who died, yes, rather He who was raised from the dead…He who is at the right hand of God the Father…He who also intercedes for us.

It is Christ who condemns…but He will NEVER condemn one of His believers! Here’s the Wuest Translation of Romans, Chapter 8, Verses 33 and 34…

Romans 8:33-34 (Wuest Translation)

Who shall bring a charge against God’s chosen-out ones? God the Father, the One who justifies (would He bring a charge)? Who is the one who

condemns? Christ Jesus is He…the One who died, yes, rather, He who has

been raised from the dead, who is on the right hand of God the Father, who also is constantly interceding on our behalf (would He bring a charge)?

The inference of Romans, Chapter 8, Verse 34? “Don’t be ridiculous!”… God the Father … the One who justifies you won’t bring a charge against you … God’s elect … Christ … the one who intercedes for you won’t bring a charge against you … God’s elect … “Don’t be ridiculous!”

As believers in Christ, we are justified…we are declared righteous…we are reconciled…we are redeemed…we are not under wrath…we are possessors of eternal life…we are residents in the sphere of grace…we are loved unconditionally…we are forgiven in the past and we stand forgiven forever…we are indwelled by the Trinity…we are saints…we are priests… we are ambassadors…we are holy…we are blameless…with this short list in

view, of all the things God has done for us, do you think He is committed to us?

How can you tell if someone is committed…for example, how would you

For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.

Acts 2:21

‘And it shall be that everyone who calls on the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ for salvation will be saved.’