Real Hope: Finding Hope Through the Life of PaulSample

God Is For Us

Paul has a point to make and he presents it in the form of five rhetorical questions, but in each case, the answers are implied. ‘God is for us,’ says Paul. We may be mistreated, fall ill, a relationship may end, or we may lose our jobs because of the economy. All these things can hurt. But they cannot triumph over us. In fact, no power in heaven or on earth can do it. Time is powerless against us; neither the present with its problems, nor the future with its uncertainties. Nothing can separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus.

Christianity doesn’t begin with your love for God. It begins with God’s love for you. I like what J.I. Packer says, ‘...what is being proclaimed here is God’s undertaking to uphold and protect us when men and things are threatening… The simple statement, ‘God is for us’, is in truth one of the richest and weightiest utterances that the Bible contains’ (Knowing God, p. 238).