A Glorious Future that Cannot be Lost...

This week, we are looking at a section of a letter in our Bible that reveals for us as followers of Jesus that our rescue from selfishness and rebellion results in a glorious future, where we live in the presence of God in Heaven in a relationship with God that is free from selfishness and rebellion for all eternity. Yesterday, we discovered that followers of Jesus have a glorious future that God affirms. We ended our time asking the question "how should we respond to the fact that God chose us beforehand, knowing full well that we would be selfish and rebellious; knowing full well that are selfishness and rebellion would result in Him sending His Son, in order to declare us not guilty of our selfishness and sin and enable us to experience the relationship with God that we were created for?"

Today, we see Paul ask the members of the church at Rome this very question and reveal for us the third different aspect of our rescue that results in a glorious future that provides us hope. So let’s look at it together in verse 31:

What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him over for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things? Who will bring a charge against God's elect? God is the one who justifies; who is the one who condemns? Christ Jesus is He who died, yes, rather who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who also intercedes for us. Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? 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." But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us.

Here we see Paul ask a string of rhetorical questions that reveal a third aspect of our rescue that results in a glorious future that provides hope. And that third aspect is that as followers of Jesus we have a glorious future that cannot be lost. If Paul was writing this letter in the language we use today, these verses would sound something like this: “who is going to get in between God and those whom He has lovingly and graciously rescued through His Son Jesus? If He allowed His Son to be treated as though He had lived our selfish and sinful lives so that He could treat us as though we lived Jesus perfect life, what is going to get between that love? Are troubles and stressful circumstances? Don’t think so. Is harassment and opposition from those who reject His Son? Don’t think so. Is hunger, poverty, danger, or violent death? Don’t think so.”

Paul then quotes from a section of a letter that is recorded for us in the Old Testament book of Psalms. In Psalm 44:22, the Psalmist describes the price that a loyal follower of God would have to pay at the hands of a world that was at war with God. Paul then explains that, in spite of the price that may be paid at the hands of those who oppose God, followers of Jesus overwhelmingly conquer through Jesus; Followers of Jesus have a glorious future and a glorious victory over the suffering that they may experience while here on earth. A glorious future that cannot be lost as a result of earthly opposition. But not only do followers of Jesus have a future that cannot be lost as a result of earthly opposition. Notice how this section of this letter concludes:

For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Paul had a certainty and a security that nothing could separate us from God’s loving rescue through Jesus Christ. No sphere of existence; No supernatural power; no dimension of time; no power imaginable; no dimension of space; nothing. Nothing can get in the way of our glorious future where followers of Jesus will be transformed into saints who never sin again that participate in the glory and splendor of God as we live in intimate relationship with Him.

Because our rescue results in a glorious future. A glorious future that the creation eagerly awaits. A glorious future that God affirms. And a glorious future that cannot be lost.

So, what shall we say to these things as followers of Jesus?