Identity

And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow—not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love. No power in the sky above or in the earth below—indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans 8:38-39).

Chalk it up to my love of all things Middle Earth, but I can’t read this verse without thinking of the Lord of the Rings movies.

When I hear “No power in the sky…” I envision the Nazgûl swooping down on the backs of their fell beasts to pick off the men of Gondor during their ill-fated retreat from Osgiliath.

“In the earth below…” brings to mind the fellowship’s encounter with the fiery Balrog deep within the caverns of Moria.

And of course, “nothing in all creation” could include all the orcs, goblins, trolls, and the myriad of other nasties found within Tolkein’s world.

I picture those foul creatures and think of how lucky we are that these “powers” are only the stuff of fantasy.

Or are they?

Now, I’m not saying the Nazgûl are real, but it does sound like Paul wants us to recognize how sometimes the things we think of as fantasy are actually a very real (but unseen) part of our reality.

Angels… Demons… Powers of Hell…

Paul is telling us that spiritual creatures do exist…and some of them are bent on your destruction. But his point isn’t that you need to be afraid of them. Quite the opposite in fact.

Paul wants you to know that no matter what you come up against, none of it will ever be able to separate you from God’s love.

Why? Because Christ has already sealed your destiny for all eternity. Which means that even death itself will be nothing more than your passage from this world into the loving arms of your Father.

So no matter what happens in your life from here out, God will always love you just as much as He loves Jesus. And nothing will ever change that.

Not your secret sins.

Not the sins of others against you

Not the mistakes from your past.

Not even the full power of hell set against you.

Nothing will ever separate you from the love of God because of what Christ has done for you.

Since we are his children, we are his heirs. In fact, together with Christ we are heirs of God’s glory. But if we are to share his glory, we must also share his suffering (Romans 8:17).

Imagine receiving an email one day informing you that you’re the last remaining relative of a wealthy king. You have never met this man, but if it turns out to be true, it means you’re now the heir of a great fortune. Your financial troubles are over.

Sadly, these emails are rarely (if ever) true.

But what if there’s an even better inheritance set aside for you? One that would put any earthly kingdom to shame? One that would solve more than just your financial troubles?

That, my friend, is true.

The moment you are adopted as a child of God through your union with Jesus, you become an heir to His glory. Your name is written into God’s will, right next to Jesus.

It seems rather pointless for God to have a will though, doesn’t it? After all, He is eternal, so why would He need to dictate where His stuff goes after He dies if He’s never going to die?

That’s why this will is different: It’s tied to your life, not to God’s.

In other words, this will kicks in when you die.

But here’s where it get’s really good: You’ve already died.

As one who has trusted Jesus, you’ve been crucified with Him. The old you is dead. The new you, however, was resurrected with Christ and is currently seated in Heaven. Which means you’ve already received your inheritance.

The riches of God’s glory and grace are available to you today.

This is great news, because, as the second half of this verse warns us, life won’t always be all rainbows and kittens for those who follow Christ. We’re going to need God’s help to get us though.

But we can trust that He will always give us what we need. Why?

Because He already has.

You have not received a spirit that makes you fearful slaves. Instead, you received God’s Spirit when he adopted you as his own children. Now we call him, “Abba, Father” (Romans 8:15).

I may be sacrificing any semblance of credibility for admitting this, but I absolutely love the movie, Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Yes, it’s ridiculous; and yes, it’s not exactly the best theological commentary; but every time I watch it I find myself laughing hysterically (and slightly ashamed at my ability to quote every line).

One scene I particularly enjoy is when God sticks His head through the clouds and speaks directly to King Arthur. God is all business, and He appears to have become quite frustrated and impatient with humanity. At one point, He goes off on a tirade about how annoying His subjects are: “If it’s one thing I can’t stand, its people groveling. Every time I try to talk to someone it’s ‘sorry this’ and ‘forgive me that’ and ‘I’m not worthy…’”

What stands out to me about this scene though, is how the film-makers, in their attempt to create something humorous, have actually provided a sobering commentary on how many people truly do view God.

A lot of folks, when they think of God, see Him as a harsh cosmic judge or task-master. They see a man with a long beard and glowing crown (not unlike the picture of God in the movie), sitting on a throne bossing people around: “Do this, do that, follow the rules, and don’t even think about doing anything fun or I shall smite thee!”

But that’s the not the picture of God we’re given in the Bible. In fact, Romans 8:15 says exactly the opposite.

Paul tells us in this verse that those who are in Christ don’t need to fear God as a slave owner. The image of a cruel, impatient, and demanding God poking His head through the clouds to give us His marching orders is simply not true.

God doesn’t see you as His slave; He sees you as His beloved child. He has adopted you into His family because He loves you with the perfect love of a sinless Father. This unconditional love is what allows us to respond to Him as our “Abba (Daddy),” and come to Him to be fathered rather than judged or condemned.

Imagine if King Arthur had addressed the movie version of God as “Daddy.” I doubt He would have received a warm embrace. But that’s the danger that comes with misunderstanding God’s true nature: As long as you fear God’s judgement, wrath, or condemnation as a slave-driver, you will be more likely to grovel before Him than to run to Him for help whenever you fall.

But now that your union with Christ has made you a permanent member of God’s family, there’s no need to grovel. You can run straight to your Abba Father with confidence that He will embrace you no matter what.

This post is an excerpt from my new book, 52 Amazing Things That Became True of You the Moment You Trusted Christ. If you enjoyed what you read here, be sure to check out the book for 51 more awesome truths about how God sees you!

 So now there is no condemnation for those who belong to Christ Jesus (Romans 8:1).

If you’ve been around the church for a while you’ve probably heard this verse a hundred times. But have you ever thought about what it actually means, particularly what it means for you?

For example, have you considered what percentage of your sin was paid for by Jesus at the Cross? Was it 20%? 50%?

According to the Bible, it was 100%. All your sin was paid for at the cross.

Or what about this question: How much of your sin has been committed after Jesus paid for it on the cross?

Unless you’re more than 2000 years old, all of your sin has been committed after the cross.

It’s probably easy for you to understand that every sinful thing you’ve ever done was paid for by Jesus, but do you realize that every sinful thing you still have yet to do has already been paid for as well?

That’s a difficult concept for our time-conscious minds to grasp.

Not for Jesus though. When He died as the perfect sacrifice two thousand years ago, He knew the entire list of sins you would commit over the course of your life (even those you will commit ten, twenty, or thirty years from now), and His death covered every last one of them.

All the sins (past, present, and future) of all believers (past, present, and future) were paid for by His death.

It’s this complete payment of all sin for all eternity that allowed Jesus to proclaim “It is finished!”

No more guilt.

No more punishment.

No more condemnation.

None.

No matter how much you’ve sinned (or will sin), if your faith is in Christ, it’s already been made right. No further justice or retribution will ever be required.

So from now on, when you sin, don’t beat yourself up and feel as if your sin is causing God to see you as unacceptable. I would encourage you instead to come before God with thankfulness:

• Thank Him that Jesus already paid for the sin you just committed.
• Thank Him that He loves and accepts you unconditionally in spite of the sin you still commit.
• Thank Him that He only sees the righteousness of Christ in you no matter how many times you still mess up.

Odds are good we all will continue to wrestle with sin in the years to come. But thanks to Jesus bending time and space to pay for our future sins with His past sacrifice, we can now run to God rather than fearing His condemnation.

Therefore, since we have been made right in God’s sight by faith, we have peace with God because of what Jesus Christ our Lord has done for us (Romans 5:1).

When the Apostle Paul penned this verse, he had just finished writing an entire chapter explaining how Abraham was saved by his faith, not by his good deeds.

This must have been quite shocking to the original recipients of the letter, being that many of the Christians in Rome had grown up in the Jewish tradition. They saw Abraham as the father of their religion, which was based heavily upon following the law (good deeds) to maintain a right standing with God.

But now Paul is telling them it wasn’t actually Abraham’s ability to follow the law that saved him—it was his faith. Abraham trusted God, and that’s the only reason God counted Him as righteous.

Paul may as well have said up was down and down was up.

He could have stopped there, leaving Romans 4 as an interesting biographical lesson on the life of Abraham, but thankfully Paul continued on to write the verse we’re looking at today (and likely stunning his readers even more).

Paul wanted to make sure his readers knew that all these things he just told them about Abraham are also true for everyone who’s faith has been placed in Christ.

That includes you and me today.

In the same way Abraham’s deeds had nothing to do with his righteousness, your deeds have no bearing on your righteousness either. Simply put, you can’t earn God’s acceptance through behavior.

At first glance, the idea that you could never do enough good to earn God’s acceptance sounds likes bad news, but actually it’s wonderful news.

Think of it this way. If God’s acceptance depended on your good works, how much good would you have to do to know that you’d earned it? At a minimum, you would need to do enough to compensate for your mistakes, right? And then, every time you messed up, you would have to do more good deeds to get back to baseline.

I don’t know about you, but that sounds exhausting. Plus, you would never know for sure whether you were doing enough, so you would always doubt God’s acceptance of you.

But look once again at what Paul tells us in this verse. He makes it clear that we have been made right with God by faith.

“Have been…” Past tense. It’s a done deal.

Your righteousness had nothing to do with your good works when God gave it to you (through Christ), and it still doesn’t today.

By trusting that you have already been made right with God, it will free you from the endless treadmill of trying to earn your own righteousness.

And that, my friend, will lead you to tremendous peace.

I no longer call you slaves, because a master doesn’t confide in his slaves. Now you are my friends, since I have told you everything the Father told me (John 15:15).

Deep in the American South, toward the end of the 1800s, some folks in a small town were getting ready for an event taking place that afternoon. This wasn’t a typical event like a carnival or a wedding though. No, these folks were setting up for a slave auction.

As hard as it is to look back at the reality of something as shameful as a slave auction, at this time they were still lively affairs—at least for those who were only there to observe. Many of the townsfolk would come to watch the wealthy plantation owners arrive in their fancy coaches and bid on new workers for their growing operations.

The work on these plantations was physically demanding, so the strongest and most muscular slaves would fetch top dollar.

Elijah, however, was not one of these powerful men. He was a small boy who was sure to be overlooked by the majority of the bidders. He knew before he even stepped in front of the crowd that he would likely be purchased by one of the smaller farms—if he was purchased at all.

The small farms, because of their reduced resources and income, were notorious for demanding impossible amounts of work from their slaves. Sometime, the owner could only afford one slave, and he would be isolated much of his life. Worse yet, many of these owners were known to beat their slaves violently if they couldn’t keep up with the demands.

Elijah was understandably frightened as he was forced onto the bidding stage.

The auctioneer held out his arm out towards Elijah and shouted, “Do I hear a dollar for this… this… runt of a boy?”

The crowd jeered with laughter.

“I need something to replace my mousing cat,” shouted a man in the front. “I’ll pay a dollar.”

“I need someone to clean up under my horses. He’s just the right size! I’ll pay two!” another man yelled.

As the auction progressed, the bidding climbed slowly but still remained far below the price of a typical slave. Elijah became more and more embarrassed as the crowd continued to belittle him.

He was ashamed.

He felt worthless.

The life of a slave was horrible enough, but adding public ridicule was almost too much. Elijah wished this life of torment forced upon him would somehow end.

But then, a man from the back stepped forward. “I will pay the highest price for this young man. I see value in him that none of you see, and I must have him as my own.”

Everyone, including Elijah, was shocked. But the man was indeed serious, and he took Elijah home with him that day for a sum far exceeding what anyone had expected.

As soon as they arrived at the man’s sprawling estate, Elijah asked him what his first job would be. He knew there would be nothing but endless work for him on a plantation as large as this man’s.

“No, Elijah. I did not purchase you to extend your slavery. I purchased you to set you free from your slavery. From now on, you will live not as my slave, but as my son—and as my friend.”

…

You and I may never have suffered the cruel fate of slavery in the American south, but we all were slaves to something far more sinister.

Every one of us was born under slavery to sin (see Romans 6:17-23). And if we wanted to overcome this sin, we became slaves to the law (see Galatians 4:1-7).

We had to endlessly strive toward overcoming our sin and reaching a point of perfection—a job that none of us could ever fulfill. We were like the young Elijah, unequipped for the demands forced on us.

We faced a future without any hope of freedom.

Thankfully though, God loves you far too much to leave you hopeless. He bought your freedom, knowing that you would never be able to pay for your own release from slavery. He paid your ransom—at the unthinkable cost of His Son’s blood—to purchase back the right to your soul for eternity.

Now, because you are set free in Christ, you are no longer a slave.

You are no longer chained to the impossible yoke of a cruel taskmaster.

You are God’s friend, and He has set you free.

But to all who believed him and accepted him, He gave the right to become children of God (John 1:12).

You know what’s absolutely amazing? The God of the universe, Creator of Earth, the One who holds everything together, has adopted you as His child.

Think about that for a second and just try to comprehend what it means.

If you’re a parent, consider how much you love your kids. As much as you love them, though, it’s with an imperfect, human love.

God loves you even more than you love your kids, because He loves you with His holy, unconditional, and righteous God-love.

Jesus tells us an amazing story of God the Father’s love in the parable of the lost son (Luke 15:11–32). In the story, a rebellious son demands his inheritance from his father immediately. Culturally, this was the same as telling his father, “You’re dead to me now.” But rather than yelling at his son or punishing him, the father gives his son the money, lets him leave, and waits in anticipation for his return.

Every day the father looks off into the distance, hoping to see his son returning. When the son finally does return, the father doesn’t even give his boy a chance to grovel. He runs to him with open arms and tackle-hugs him at full speed! No matter how much the boy rejected or disobeyed His dad, there was nothing he could have done to make his father stop loving him.

Do you realize this is actually a story about God’s love for you? No matter how much you’ve messed up, He will always be standing there with His arms wide open—just like the father in the story—waiting for you to come home to Him. It doesn’t matter what you’ve done or where you’ve been. None of it will make any difference in how much He loves you.

I never understood the depth of a love like this until my daughter was born. I can say without a doubt that there is nothing my girl could ever do to make me stop loving her. No matter how many times she hits me as a toddler, yells at me as a teenager, or disowns me as an adult, I will always be there waiting for her with open arms. I simply cannot fathom living my life apart from my favorite girl no matter what she does. Honestly. I’m even getting a bit choked up now just typing these words and thinking about how much I love her.

But as much as my daughter means to me, you mean even more to God as His adopted son.

He loves you to the same extent that He loves Jesus.

For the Lord your God is living among you.
    He is a mighty savior.
He will take delight in you with gladness.
    With his love, he will calm all your fears.
    He will rejoice over you with joyful songs” (Zephaniah 3:17).

I love my daughter.

Yeah, I know, she’s my kid so I kinda have to love her, right?

But I genuinely love her. I’m crazy about her. In fact, I’d rather spend time with her than anyone else. You might even say I delight in her.

Last weekend, we celebrated my birthday. And like any 34-year-old, I rented a bounce castle for the afternoon.

Did I actually want a bounce castle for my birthday?

Well, yeah, I kinda did.

But what I wanted even more was to see the smile on my daughter’s face as the castle began to inflate and take its shape. I wanted to hear her laughter and shouts of joy as she bounced for hours.

I delight in my daughter’s happiness because I delight in her. Her joy is my joy.

In the same way, God delights in you as His adopted son. Sometimes, He chooses to bless you for no other reason than to delight in your joy with you.

He did that for me at my party last Saturday. When all the kids ran inside to gorge on cupcakes, I stayed back to lie down in the middle of my little inflatable kingdom and rest for a few minutes. In that moment, engulfed in the warm sunshine and inflated vinyl, I heard the Lord speak to me:

“The angels and I are having a great time up here watching you kids have fun. 

Oh, and I gave you this sunshine as a gift to show you my love.

Happy birthday, son.

You are my joy.

I delight in you.

Don’t ever forget it.”

“I have loved you, my people, with an everlasting love.
        With unfailing love I have drawn you to myself (Jeremiah 31:3).

If you’ve ever seen the classic 70’s film, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, you will undoubtedly remember the scene where Wonka unveils his top-secret new creation: The Everlasting Gobstopper.

The Gobstopper, for those of you who didn’t grow up pretending to be an Oompa Loompa, is a funky looking jawbreaker that never gets any smaller. In the words of Willy Wonka himself: “You can suck them and suck them and suck them and they’ll never get any smaller. Never!”

A single piece of this magic candy would last you the rest of your life because it would never diminish in size…never be reduced…never shrink in the slightest.

In other words, it would be everlasting.

ev·er·last·ing
     adjective
     1. lasting forever; eternal: everlasting future life.

The Lord uses this exact same word when He describes His love through the prophet Jeremiah, which means nothing will ever make His love for you stop, shrink, or be reduced in any way.

The moment you put your faith in Christ, every barrier that ever stood between you and the everlasting love of God was removed forever:

• Your bad decisions will not reduce it.
• Your stubbornness cannot stop it.
• Your sin will never block it.

Or, to (loosely) paraphrase Willy Wonka, no matter how much you feel like you suck, God’s love for you will never get any smaller.

This post is an excerpt from my new book, 52 Amazing Things That Became True of You the Moment You Trusted Christ. If you enjoyed what you read here, be sure to check out the book for 51 more awesome truths about how God sees you!

For I know the plans I have for you,” says the Lord. “They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope (Jeremiah 29:11).

Chances are, you’ve at least considered the thought that God may have had big plans for you once. But not anymore. That ship has sailed.

Maybe it’s because of something you did in the past, or something that was done to you. Perhaps it’s the accumulated effects of all the shame and guilt that come with addiction. Either way, you look at the path your life has taken and believe the lie that God can no longer use you.

You must realize though, nothing from your past will ever be bad enough to disqualify you from the amazing future God has planned for you. Just look at God’s prophecies to the Israelites through Jeremiah.

For the first 28 chapters of the book, God lays out a list of all the ways the Israelites have turned away from Him. There’s adultery and idolatry. They’ve listened to false prophets and allowed paganism to corrupt their worship. The entire nation has hardened their hearts toward God and rejected His ways.

As a consequence for these sins, God has allowed them to be taken into exile by the Babylonians. But even then, He doesn’t give up on them.

In the twenty-ninth chapter, God encourages His people to not lose heart even while they remain in captivity. He calls them to set their eyes back on Him and warns them to not be deceived again. He encourages them that this period of exile will not last forever, and that He hasn’t forgotten them.

Then, in the midst of one of the lowest points in Israel’s history, God makes this stunning promise to them:

For I know the plans I have for you,” says the Lord. “They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope (Jeremiah 29:11).

No matter how far the Israelites strayed from God, they would always be welcomed back into His good plan once they chose to trust Him again. And it’s no different with you and me.

Regardless of where you have been, God still has a plan for you.

A plan with a future.

A plan full of hope.