The Perseverance of the Love of God

Christ has already done the hard work, how much more will he finish the easy task that remains?

Hey Friends, I don’t know how to turn off the “Pledge Your Support” button at the bottom of this article. I bring this up because two very kind souls made a monetary pledge after my last post was published. While I appreciate the gesture, I’d much rather you pledge to your church. It needs it. If you don’t have a church, or want to support me and this Substack, please pledge to my new church, St. John’s, Park Slope, instead. Thank you.

And now, something akin to last Sunday’s sermon:

“I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ” (St. Paul in Philippians 1:6).

This is my favorite Bible verse. I mean, did you hear it? “... He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.” It means that God will finish the work that he has started in us. It means that God’s love will never let us go.

Today’s epistle reading unpacks the radical message of this verse. But before we dive into Romans 5, let’s set the context. We need take a look at what Paul’s been up to thus far in the first 4 chapters of the book:

• In chapter 1, Paul says that the Gentiles have done terrible things. He’s writing to Jewish Christians, and he entices them to pat themselves on the back: “Yeah, ‘those people,’ they’re really awful.”

• Having reeled in his audience, he goes on to say in chapter 2 , “but you do the same thing — the very same thing — and, in fact, you’re worse because you have Torah. You have the Law. They don’t. We should know better.”

• And then in chapter 3, we read that famous line, “For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” What this means is that there is now no more “us” and “them.” The playing field has been leveled. Everyone stands under judgment.

• It’s really bad news. That is, until we get the best news of all. In the second half of chapter 3 and in chapter 4, we learn that though we deserve condemnation, God, in his mercy, has made “those people” and you and me right with himself, not by virtue of what we’ve done, but by what Christ has done for us on our behalf. It’s the good news of “justification by faith.” It’s the promise that, despite everything, we have “peace with God” through the work of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Romans 5 further unpacks this good news. I want to focus primarily on the second half of today’s reading, because it’s here that we’re presented with a word that seems too good to be true — a message very similar to that of my favorite verse in Philippians.

In verse 6, Paul writes, “for while we were weak, at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly.” Jesus didn’t lay down his life for the righteous or for those trying their best but for the ungodly — for those who were “still sinners” — for his “enemies” (5:8, 10). When Paul writes, “rarely will anyone die for a righteous person – though perhaps for a good person someone might actually dare to die,” what he’s saying is that Christ has seen us in our most unloveable moments and has chosen to love us anyway (5:7). In the places of your life where everyone has has turned away from you, it’s there that God has moved toward you.

Loving the unlovable is hard. “We can care deeply - selflessly - about those we know,” says Matt Damon in “Interstellar,” “but that empathy rarely extends beyond our line of sight.” God, however, has done the difficult work: he’s loved those “beyond his line of sight” — he’s died for his “enemies.”

So God has done the unthinkable, says St. Paul. He’s loved those at enmity with him. How much more, Paul’s argument begins, now that he’s done the hard work will he finish the job? 

I mean, think of the difficult project of putting a human on the moon. It took 8 years, 10 practice-run missions, more than 400,000 engineers, scientists and technicians, in today’s money, roughly $180 billion, and everything had to go right. (You can't make many mistakes in space.)¹ The force of Paul’s argument is as if imagining having landed on the moon, Neil Armstrong then decides, “I’m not gonna step foot outside. I’m not going to go down that ladder.” It's unthinkable.

Or imagine you have to travel through the night to visit a friend in trouble. You’ve driven through rain, snow, and fog to be there for this person. You are not going to abandon your quest when you arrive at the house, the skies are clear, the sun comes out, and all you have to do is walk up the pathway and ring the doorbell. That is the force of Paul’s argument.²

The logic of Paul’s argument is that if God’s already done the difficult task, how much more will he finish the easy part that remains.

Maybe you’ve heard of the doctrine of the “Perseverance of the Saints.” I’m not all that interested in saints persevering, I’m interested in the perseverance of the love of God, and that is what St. Paul is promising us in this text. It’s the balm of Gilead; it’s the peace that passes all understanding; it’s the Good News of the Gospel for you and me: there’s nothing we can do to lose God’s love.

My friends, maybe you’re here this morning and you feel weak and unloveable. Maybe a relationship has gone cold, or your career hasn’t turned out as it was supposed to, or something that you’ve done has backfired on you. The message of this text is that it is in those moments that the love of God is moving toward you. It is in those places that God’s love is being “poured out into your heart” (5:5).

At the end of his life, F.F. Bruce, the celebrated British New Testament scholar, was asked what does it mean to be a Christian. He responded with a single sentence, “A Christian is someone who believes in the God who justifies the ungodly.” What’s more, now that he made the “ungodly,” godly and his “enemies,” friends, how much more can we be “sure of this, that he who began a good work in us will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.”

It’s too good to be true and yet it’s true. He’s done the hard part already, how much more will he finish the easy task that remains? How much more will he see us through unto salvation despite our screw ups.

1. I got this information from the Institute of Physics webpage.

2. N.T. Wright put me onto this illustration in his Paul for Everyone: Romans, Part 1. (My books are on their way to Brooklyn, NY. I’ll find the page number when we’re reunited.)

Artwork: “The Four Gospels” by Makoto Fujimura.