Sunday, July 27, 2014 | 9:30/11:00 a.m.

Who Is in a Position to Condemn?

Shannon J. Kershner
Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Psalm 105:1–11
Romans 8:26–39

Becoming the Beloved means letting the truth of our Belovedness become enfleshed in everything we think, say, or do.

Henri Nouwen
Life of the Beloved: Spiritual Living in a Secular World

The great theologian Paul Tillich claims these words from Romans 8 are among the most powerful words ever written. He states that “the mere sound of them is able to grasp human souls in desperate situations. They are stronger than the sound of exploding mortar shells, of weeping at open graves. They are stronger than the sighs of the sick or the moaning of the dying. They are stronger than the self-accusation of those in despair. And these words prevail over the permanent whisper of anxiety we all carry around within us” (Paul Tillich, The New Being, chapter 7; cited on religion-online.org).

Tillich is convinced God’s Spirit can radically shape our imaginations and our lives through the power of this proclamation from Romans—this proclamation of God’s unconquerable and unquenchable love for us. I bet if we could have ever asked Tillich to choose his favorite scripture passage, this Romans 8 text would have made the cut. From his writing, it is clear this chapter from Romans held that kind of power for him. But do these words hold that same kind of power for you? Do they shape your imagination and prevail over the permanent whisper of anxiety you carry around within your own heart? Most of the time? Sometimes? Never? They do for me, most of the time. Well, at least on the days when I will make the time to remember them. As a matter of fact, I clearly remember the first time I really truly heard these words.

Growing up, like the children here at Fourth Presbyterian Church, I too heard parts of this text on most Sundays in worship. My preacher-father, like those of us who are your pastors here, was very traditional in his use of liturgy in worship. So on almost every Sunday, these words from Romans 8 formed the Assurance of Pardon. Who is in a position to condemn us? Only Christ, and Christ died for us. Christ rose for us. Christ reigns in power for us. Christ prays for us. Nothing in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. As I grew up, I heard these same words being proclaimed Sunday after Sunday as a promise of our forgiveness, as a testimony to our belovedness. I remember as a kid mouthing the words with him as he said them. I did not even have to really think about it. The words would just come.

But the first time I truly heard them unleashed in all their radical power happened in the beginning of my adulthood. Immediately after college, I began working as a pre-seminary intern at St Philip Presbyterian Church in Houston. Part of my job was to help lead the liturgy in worship. Liturgy, by the way, is all of the things we say and do together that comprise our worship. The liturgy gives our worship its shape and its content.

Well, one Sunday I was given the portion of the liturgy that included the proclamation of the Assurance of Pardon. Not wanting to mess anything up, I began to write down exactly what I would say. And out of sheer habit, I found myself writing these words from Romans 8. That’s the power of memorizing liturgy and scripture. It is one reason why having children in worship is so incredibly important. The words of worship shape your imagination even when you do not realize it. It happened to me. But as a young adult, writing down these memorized words from my worship experiences as a child, suddenly the light bulb came on for me in a new way.

For the first time in my life, I truly heard what Paul was proclaiming in these words. I truly heard and let it wash over me, even if it was just for a minute, this promise of forgiveness and the testimony about my belovedness, regardless of my own actions. Now perhaps this moment of clarity stood out so much for me because of where I was on life’s journey. I can promise you, as a young adult trying to figure out how to navigate life after college, other than from my family and my church, little of my reality offered any testimony about my belovedness.

Rather, from the church of the marketplace, I constantly heard testimony that only proclaimed I was not enough: I did not own enough; I did not make enough; I did not do enough; I was not smart enough; I was not good enough; I was certainly not thin enough, etc. That “not enough” testimony tended to be what surrounded me in those years, a testimony that frankly, here on Michigan Avenue as a middle-aged adult, still surrounds me today. And yet even in the middle of “not enough” land, because of these words in Romans, I had my first real taste of the extravagant grace and lavish love—truths that had been proclaimed in my baptism, truths that are proclaimed in every baptism, but truths to which I had not really paid much attention before.

Listen again and maybe you might hear it, too: Who is in a position to condemn us, Paul asks. Who is in any position to judge us for who we are or for what we have done or left undone? Who is it that honestly holds that kind of power over our futures and our lives? Who is in a position to condemn us? Is it our boss at work or our partner at home? No, Paul says. Jesus Christ is the only one with that kind of power. The one who is both our brother and our Savior—that’s who is our judge. Our only judge is the Jesus we claim who made a home with us, in order to teach, in order to heal, in order to show us in flesh and blood what Love looks like and what Love does. That Jesus is our only judge.

So again I ask us, Who is in a position to condemn us? Who gets to tell us who we are or if we are good enough? Is it Wall Street or the SAT score or where our neighborhood is located? No. It is only Jesus Christ. Our judge is none other than the one who was born a ruddy-faced Jewish baby boy, who had dirty diapers and gave his parents sleepless nights just like the rest of us. That one is our only judge.

But let me ask just one more time, just to make sure we are hearing what this scripture says: Who is in a position to condemn us? Is it our parents or our children or our bank accounts or our teachers? Is it our friends or our enemies or all those mistakes we have made and continue to make? Is it the power of the “not enough” voices that surround us? Do any of them, does any of that, have the power to judge us and to tell us who and whose we are? No. It is only Jesus Christ. Our only judge is none other than the one who followed God’s call, even when it led to a criminal’s death on a cross. Our only judge, the only one who gets to tell us who and whose we are, is the same one who humbled himself completely for our sake. Our only judge, the one who holds our life, is the same one who cried out for the forgiveness of his executors. Our only judge is the same one who was raised from the dead, who went back into God, who carries our human face with him, who knits us together as family. Our only judge, the only one who gets to tell us who and whose we are, is Jesus Christ.

This Jesus is the only one who can condemn us. This Jesus who became weak in power in order to be strong in love is the only one who holds our future in his hands. This redeemer is the only one with the power to tell us who and whose we are. Have you really heard it yet? Our only judge is none other than the one who claims us in our baptism, who calls us beloved, and who crafts us into being his body where we live here and now. Do you truly hear the reality of such extravagant grace and lavish love? Can you let it wash over you, even if it is just for a minute?

I hope so. Because really hearing that proclamation of promise, that testimony of belovedness, will change your life. Trusting the promise that nothing—no thing—will ever separate you from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord will change the way you make decisions. It will change the way you look at yourself in the mirror. It will change the way you walk by people on the street. It will change the way you spend your money and your time. It will change the way you think of church. For if, by the power of God’s Spirit, we can really hear and trust what God is saying to us through Paul’s words—that the one who knows us the best is the same one who loves us the most—then we realize we have to make a choice every single day. As God’s beloved ones, what are we going to trust more? Are we going to live our lives out of fear or out of gratitude?

Are we going to live our lives and spend our time fundamentally afraid that the “not enough” testimony from all around and from even deep within is true, or that God might love everyone else but certainly cannot love me given all that has happened, or that we have messed up too much and too often that “beloved one” can no longer be our name, waters of baptism not withstanding? Are we going to live our lives and spend our time being governed by those fears? Are we going to turn the proclamation that only Christ can condemn us into bad news because we don’t think we can ever be good enough or faithful enough to measure up? Is that what we are going to trust? Are we going to live primarily by fear?

Or are we going to try and live out of a sense of gratitude for what this scripture, what the gospel, promises us? Are we going to live our lives with the orientation of a deep and abiding thankfulness that trusts not in our own goodness but in God’s goodness; a thankfulness that tries to remember and live that only Jesus is the one who gets to define us? That trusting that promise makes all the difference in the world because it means we are trying to trust that nothing—no thing, not anything in the past or anything in the future, not anything we have done or left undone, not any voice that tells us we are not enough, not anything from within us or without us—nothing, no thing can separate us from God’s love. Not even death can separate us from God’s love. Period. End of story. That is the gospel good news of this text. You are God’s beloved, and there is nothing you can do about it except choose how you will respond. So what will it be, fear or gratitude?

Paul would claim that when we choose gratitude, we are free. We can accept the reality that we will never be more than real, authentic, skilled sinners. But we will not have to pretend to be otherwise. By choosing gratitude, we are saying we really do believe that God is as good as Jesus said God is. We are claiming that God truly is the friend of sinners. We are claiming that more times than not, we trust there really is more mercy in God than can ever be sin in us. We can choose gratitude over fear because, as Romans 8 testifies, the one who judges us is the same one who became human for us. And nothing can separate us from this extravagant grace and lavish love. That is our assurance.

Now are any of us worthy of such extravagant grace and lavish love? Absolutely not. None of us fully live into our calling as God’s children. None of us is 100 percent committed to Jesus, and we never will be. None of us has arrived at perfect discipleship. None of us is worthy. But that is not the issue. The issue of the gospel is that God is worthy. God decided to love and claim us from the very beginning, even before time. God never began to love us. God never began to love you. God has always loved you,¹ and as we see proclaimed in this passage in Romans, God in Jesus Christ, will always love you. It is extravagant grace and lavish love.

I believe hearing these words and taking them into our souls is the antidote to a life lived out of fear. We live the way we do as people of faith, not because we are afraid of God or of not being enough, but because we are grateful for God and for God’s claim on our lives. It is a completely different way of living. Frankly, it is a countercultural way of living. But when we can do it, we will discover our God-given freedom. When we stop looking for our flaws in the religious mirror or stop listening to all those voices that proclaim “not enough,” then we are free to look upon the one who sets us free. When we choose gratitude over fear as our response to being beloved, we will discover our freedom to make and keep life human. We will discover our freedom to love God, our freedom to love our neighbor, and our freedom to build up the earth. Our discipleship, rather than based on motives of guilt or fear or worthiness, will be based simply and beautifully on gratitude to God for God’s wildly extravagant grace and lavish love, a proclamation Paul makes again and again in this letter to the Romans.

It is no wonder why Paul Tillich was convinced these words speak so loudly and grasp our imaginations. It is no wonder why, as the Assurance of Pardon is proclaimed, we might one day lose track of where we are because we are too caught up in their sheer beauty. These words from Paul contain the gospel truth. They proclaim what Jesus showed us is true—that we have been created by God for love and freedom, chosen before the foundation of the world for such extravagant grace and lavish love. These words do indeed shake the foundations of the earth. And when we take them seriously, these words can also form the foundation of our faith.

Who is in a position to condemn us? Only Christ. And nothing will ever separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Trust it.

Notes

1. Thanks, Dad. I remember this too.