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

Confidence in God's Love Grounded in 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. He who did not spare his own son but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?

And there's this penetrating and compelling logical causation, there's a sequence here that flows through to give us this confidence. God did not spare his own son but delivered him up for us all. 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 obeying.