Tag: God’s Love

Look at the verbs, Bible teachers say: see what God does and has done.  The first seven verses of Romans are loaded with verbiness.  When he is not the subject doing the action, he is the force acting upon the subject.  God is not only a verb, of course–he not only acts, but he is (which makes him more of a sentence).  But his continual, effective, neverending doing should prompt us to cease our own continual (less effective) doing once in a while to reflect on what’s going on around us and in us.

• He calls (Romans 1:1, 6, 7).  If you ever heard him, if the stream-of-consciousness in your head has ever been altered by what you hear, either of or from him, he’s calling you.  You personally, with your own hangups and complications.  You heard him, not in some abstract or intellectual framework, but because he was calling you to belong to Christ.  To be a saint, meaning
• He sets apart (vs. 1).  Paul applies the verb to himself, but to be a saint is to be set apart.  If you are in Christ, this means you!  Outwardly there may be nothing special about you.  Inwardly, you may have failed at all the goals you set for yourself.  But his aim for you still stands: whether you feel it or not, you are a saint.  You exist a little above the commonplace.  You may feel invisible, but to him you’re walking around in a beam of light.
• He promises (vs. 2).  And a promise from him is as good as done.
• He descends (“was descended,” vs. 2).  In those numbing genealogies in Genesis and I Chronicles he was descending, laying out the bloodlines that he would follow until he came to rest in a Galilean girl.  Until then, descending in smoke and fire, in word and command, in judgment and mercy.  Since then, descending in the life-changing power of the Holy Spirit.  Always descending, because that’s the only way to reach us.
• He declares (vs. 4).  “These things were not done in a corner,” Paul reminded King Agrippa.  Nor are they the property of the enlightened.  The declaration is for everyone who hears it: Jesus is Lord, the way to God, the means of forgiveness.
• He gives (vs. 5).  An implied verb, because Paul and his fellow apostles received the grace and the office to preach.  As all preachers do.  As all witnesses do.  As all of us do.
• He brings about faith and obedience (vs. 5).  Look around you.  How many people on the street, in their cars, in the grocery store–how many do you suppose have faith in God?  Not an airy belief but a conviction that guides their decisions and choices?  How many of them would believe you, if you shared your faith with them, simply on the basis of your testimony?  None of them.  Faith happens when he brings it about, and obedience is the proof.
• He loves (vs. 7).  Not a fond inclination or a benevolent state of mind, but a searching, busy, can’t-leave-well-enough-alone love that will not let us go.  His love wants better for us than we want for ourselves and will go–literally–to the ends of the earth to secure it.  I like the Paul puts “love” last, after all those other active verbs.  This love has muscle, backed up by everything that went before.  What more proof do we need?