As Paul talks about the life of faith, it is a thing far removed from a prosperity gospel. Many prosperity preachers quote from our reading for today, but they tend to leave out or gloss over certain parts of it.
The reality of being a child of God is that we live in the same world as those who reject being children of God. At first we might think that this is unfortunate, but in reality, for those of us who once rejected the idea of being a child of God, this is very much a God thing (fortune has nothing to do with it). Only being in a world with the children of God provoked me to reconsider my stance toward God’s kingdom. Consequently, I believe that the children of God are not supposed to use the planet Earth as some sort of escape pod into eternity, but to continue to enact kingdom thinking and kingdom action in a world that desperately needs it. The job of the children of God is to restore this world, not just spiritually, but in every other possible way.
This means that preachers need to find a way to speak the transforming word from a first century context into the context of their own century. It means that a farmer ought to leave the land in better shape the day that he is planted than on the day he first planted seed. It means that the medical professional and researcher should strive for progress by finding ways to ameliorate or cure disease. And the ecologist ought to steadily restore the health of this planet.
What about people that work with children? We deal with transformation and nurture and healing and restoration, too. But we also deal with secrets that resist truth and transformation, deprivation, sickness and toxicity. Constantly exposed to pain, we have to find a way to deal with pain. Which takes us back to our reading for today.
What if we saw the world, not as a place where we could completely avoid hurt, pain, persecution, violence, disease, disaster, or death. Not only is it a place where we witness these things; it is a place where we experience these things. If we, or those we love did not experience them, what calling, what drive would compel us to combat them?
It is not that we ought to expect to avoid these things but rather that we resist where we can, suffer where we have to, and yield only when yielding is inevitable. We will do none of these things as a victim, but rather a victor: a victor in Jesus Christ. Is this not what Paul calls us to do?
What then are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up for all of us, will he not with him also give us everything else? Who will bring any charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? It is Christ Jesus, who died, yes, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us. Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written,
"For your sake we are being killed all day long;
we are accounted as sheep to be slaughtered."
No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Romans 8:31-39 - NRSV
Grace, peace, and victory -
Ron
