A Word in Season: Confidence in God's Love (Romans 8:32)

How much does God love you, if you're a Christian? What kind of confidence do you have and can you have that the things that are happening to you will work out together for good?

How do you know that God has a heart of love towards you? How can you look at everything that's happening around you and in you and to you and conclude that the

Lord loves you? Paul's logic in Romans chapter 8 and verse 32 is this

And there's this penetrating and compelling logical causation.

There's a sequence here that flows through to give us this confidence. Now we need to understand of course that this is not an act of cruelty on the part of the

Father toward the Son. This is not the subjection of an unwilling victim to unspeakable pains.

All the way through the New Testament and in fact all the way through the Old Testament when it points forwards the servant of God, the

Messiah, the Lord Jesus Christ, he is a willing sacrifice. He is a volunteer in that sense.

He is willing and even eager to do the work that his Father has given him to do even though there are times when in his flesh he shrinks back from what is involved.

That's not unwillingness to obey, that's counting the cost of obedience and the wonder is that the

Son sustains that to the very end. But what Paul wants to emphasise here is the love of the triune

God particularly now as it's seen in the Father because the

Father loves the Son. The Father delights in the Son. The Father is well pleased with the

Son. The Father lavishes love upon his Son because there's nothing in the

Son that would for one moment hold back or diminish or undermine the infinite love of an infinitely holy

God. But the point here is that the Lord God did not spare his own

Son. He didn't hold back from anything when he poured out his wrath upon him on his people's behalf on the tree.

He delivered him up for us all. It's not that he didn't love the Son, it's that we should understand by the fact that he was willing to put his

Son through these things, that he was ready to do this, that this was his plan and purpose is in fact a demonstration of the love that he has for the people that he gave to his

Son in order that the Son might deliver them. And so you've got these two wonders of love in this verse.

You've got the love of the Father for the Son and you've got the love of the Father for the people that he's given to the

Son. And such is the Father's love that he is willing to not spare his own

Son but to deliver him up for us all. And that then is the basis of our confidence.

If God has already done this, if God has already made the greatest possible demonstration of love by giving his dearly beloved

Son to save us from our sins, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?

What would God withhold having given his Son? Why would God now abandon us if he has given his

Son? How would he let us go if he has paid such a price that we might be his?

All our confidence hangs upon the love of the Father as it's demonstrated in the loving sacrifice of his beloved

Son, Jesus Christ. And so if you are not a believer, you come to God through the

Son in order to enjoy this great love. And you find in that great act, the

Father's giving of the Son, the Son's laying down of his life, all the confidence you need to trust him, to love him, to serve him, and in every aspect of your life from this point on to have confidence that God acts towards you out of love.

And should you ever doubt that, go back to its first and greatest demonstration that the

Father spared not his own Son but delivered him up for us all. If he has done that, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?