Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript – Reformation Covenant Church

The sermon text for today is Romans 8:15-17 and the sermon topic is loss and sonship. Please stand to hear the word of God. Romans 8 beginning at verse 15. For you did not receive the spirit of bondage again to fear. But you receive the spirit of adoption by whom we cry out, “Abba, Father.” The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God. And if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with him, that we may also be glorified together.

Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for these verses. We pray that you would help us to understand them. Father, help us to be more trusting and become more persevering because of the very trials you give us in our sufferings. Bless us, Father, with an understanding of the relationship between loss, suffering, and us being your sons. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen. Please be seated.

This was originally intended, as you might remember, as a Lent sermon, but I think it works pretty well after Jonah to correct some things or to put the other side on that text—that our Savior calls on us to meditate in terms of his death and resurrection.

In Jonah, suffering and loss are of course all over the place. In chapter one, there’s the suffering of the sailors because of disobedient Jonah in the hull of the ship. We suffer stormy seas in our country and all too often we’re asleep in the hull, not realizing that those difficulties and trials are really our fault. Judgment begins with the house of God. But their suffering of the sailors led to their conversion.

Jonah’s suffering—being tossed into the ocean, then living in the belly of the beast for three days—that suffering as well results in Jonah’s conversion. We could say a death to life experience. And then the suffering of the Ninevites being told that they’re to either convert and be obedient to God or be destroyed. Them taking upon themselves fasting, death, humbling themselves before God. The suffering that they’re called to do to demonstrate their repentance leads to their conversion.

So it’s really death and resurrection that is the theme of the Easter season. And this relates suffering and loss, cross to resurrection life. But those texts may cause some of you to only see this suffering and then restoration in terms of sin, because that’s clearly what’s going on in chapters 1, 2, and 3. The sailors are originally idolaters. Jonah is disobedient. And the Ninevites are certainly involved in idolatry of some sort and nature that’s going to result in their judgment, their complete destruction.

So, so often when we think of suffering, we think of texts like Jonah and it causes us to doubt our own relationship to God when we suffer. When we suffer, when we have loss, when we have trials and tribulations, we’re prone to think that it’s our fault somehow. That if we were good Christians, if we were obedient, if we weren’t like the idolatrous sailors, Jonah, and Ninevites, then this suffering wouldn’t be necessary.

Yes, God will use the suffering to bring us to repentance and life, but we still sort of suffer with a connection of suffering and sin. And so we tend to doubt in our times of loss, whether they’re due to our own disobedience or whether they’ve got nothing to do with our own disobedience, which is more often the case. We tend to doubt our own relationship to God being a good one and a loving one from him to us as his sons and daughters.

This sermon is based upon a talk I heard in San Diego with Christine last October at a conference of the Christian Counseling and Education Foundation on loss. Winston Smith was the speaker and he talked about a couple of cases. He does biblical counseling and he talked about a woman that he counseled with who had a tragic miscarriage. Her parents then divorced and she had further troubles piled upon those.

She had loss, significant, gut-wrenching loss. And when he counseled with this woman, he noticed that her hands were balled up the entire time she’s talking about this. And her anger is kind of manifested in her hands like this. And he asked her why she was doing it. And she said that, you know, she knew she had to be doing something wrong for all these things to be happening to her to experience such dreadful calamities one after the other, and she was trying to cut her palms to injure herself because she knew that somehow she was in radical sin.

He talked about another man who suffered the loss of a job, got displaced somehow in his work, and then there are all these consequent losses and suffering in terms of his family and his place in the church and all these things. And this man confessed to him that he frequently when driving around would think about driving into an abutment or over a cliff and just ending his life because he had lost all hope.

He was despairing, and again because he interpreted his sufferings as the judgment of God upon him. He didn’t feel as angry and emotional as did the woman that Smith talked about, but he was so detached from everything and he had entered into a state of deep depression, a loss of hope. And he interpreted that loss of hope again as a demonstration that God surely caused him to doubt deeply that God loved him and that he was a son of God.

We tend to think that way about our losses. There are people regularly in this church at various times who suffer great losses and many times our interpretation of that is that we’re not really sons of God. The gospel doesn’t help in these sort of situations. The gospel actually can make it worse from one perspective because we know that our losses ultimately will be reversed. We know of the truth of the future that God holds for us at the consummation.

We have the good news of the forgiveness of our sins. But somehow even when we reflect on those things, it can at times increase our suffering over our losses because then it just is really difficult to put together those truths with our experience and it causes us to doubt God’s love for us and whether we’re really children of God or not. It almost makes it worse for Christians who focus on the gospel and yet don’t understand the relationship of suffering and loss to the love of God for us.

And that’s why this sermon I think is so important—is to remember in our losses and suffering, or to cause others to remember that actually the very reverse is true. The text we just read is an indication, a strong indication that these losses are actually a demonstration of sonship. Not to be seen as doubt of our nature before our adoption by God, but actually proof of it. We go through these difficulties, these sufferings, these losses, and Romans 8 tells us how to understand those things and then how to respond in the midst of those things.

And so I hope that you will enter into thinking about your particular losses. You may be suffering in deep measure right now. Of course, the extended family of the Evans has gone through deep loss and suffering, and somehow the knowledge of heaven just doesn’t quite get rid of that pain and suffering. And so each of us—you know, I go through lots of loss because of my physical state. Other people go through loss through difficulties in relationships.

People go through loss when trusted friends for whatever reason turn on them and kind of undercut them—loss of relationship, slander that regularly occurs in I think all churches, whispering behind the back. These things can just be tremendous sources of loss and suffering to us, and we have to I think be instructed by today’s text in what they mean and what they don’t mean.

Why does this hurt so badly is what we can ask ourselves. We know the gospel, and because we know the gospel well, what is happening here? Not just why is it happening? We may be able to understand intellectually that this is going to be good for us, that it’ll train us to help other people. But why does it hurt so badly? And that very pain, suffering, anxiety is real, and we feel like somehow as Christians we shouldn’t be like that. And if we are like that, then there’s something wrong with us.

We’re a spiritual failure. But I think today’s text, as we open it up, will tell us exactly the opposite. That the pain and the severity of the pain of the losses that we suffer is actually the other way around. It’s a demonstration that we are actually children of God. So that’s what we’re going to talk about today.

Underneath our losses and the pain that we feel, there’s a great loss, and a great fear, at least. And that fear is that we’re not really children of God or not very good children of God, as these losses demonstrate to us God’s unhappiness with us. So the great loss that we struggle with—I think sometimes consciously and sometimes unconsciously—is the loss of assurance that we are children of God. And there are lots of Christians who will assist you to question your relationship to God when you’re in pain and trouble.

They’ll bring to mind stories of Jonah rather than the story of Job. And so we have in our lives as Christians this deep fear, this deep sense of loss of assurance that we are children of God. But the text we just read, and lots of other texts as well, teach us that loss and grief are actually a part of the very definition of what it means to be a child of God. Loss and grief is actually a definition of what it means to be a child of God.

Now, it’s not the only definition, but the text that we just read, as well as other texts in Romans that we’ll turn to, tells us that actually those very things that cause us to doubt sonship are actually demonstrations of us being children of God. So when we have these things, we are actually walking in the spirit of Christ. Let me explain that by reading from Romans 8:14, the text just before the text we just read.

As many as are led by the spirit of God, these are sons of God. So as we’re led by the spirit of Christ, the spirit of God, that’s a definition that tells us that we are indeed children of God. It’s an assurance of our sonship and our relationship to God. Loss and suffering are central to our identity as God’s children because that’s the path of Christ. And we see it over and over again once we start to look for it in the scriptures that this is the path of Christ.

And of course, the text we just read says that. The text we just read says in verse 15 that we didn’t receive a spirit of bondage again to fear, but you did receive the spirit of adoption by whom we cry out, “Abba, Father.” Then it goes on to say, “The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with him, that we may also be glorified together.”

So what it’s telling us is that if we suffer with Jesus, then it’s actually a demonstration that we’re walking in the spirit of Christ and a demonstration that we are indeed sons of God. Now, there are other demonstrations, of course, of our sonship, and there are other ways that God uses to assure us of his love, which we doubt deeply, do we not? Of course we do. And when we go through trials and loss, there’s great temptation to doubt that God really loves us or cares for us.

And one of the ways we’re supposed to recognize that God loves us, that we’re walking in the spirit of Christ, is because of those very trials and sufferings and losses themselves. I don’t see any way out of understanding this text in that particular way. We’re assured we’re walking in the spirit of Christ when we suffer with him, that we may also then be glorified with him. Suffering with Christ is not a counterindication to our relationship to our heavenly Father and his love for us.

It is part of our identification of ourselves as children of God. So Romans 8 assures us of this. It tells us that this is an indication—suffering, loss is a demonstration of our walking in the spirit of Christ, who is the child of God the Father, so to speak, and is the definition for us of who we are as children of God as well.

So what does it mean to be a son of God, to be a child of God? And this text tells us that one of the central things it means is that you’re a child who cries out to your father. That’s what a child does. A child cries out to the one that he knows cares for him and will help him. And so the sufferings that lead us to cry out to God, as Jesus did—”Abba, Father”—this is actually a very picture of what it means to be a child of God.

To be a child of God is not some sort of stoic suffering in the midst of our difficulties, knowing that God is sovereign. That’s not what it is. But so often we tend to think that’s what it is. We don’t want people necessarily to know our points of weakness and our sufferings and losses. And we think to ourselves that, well, if we’re loved by God, this isn’t any big deal. I can just buck up, ignore the pain, ignore the loss and suffering. And then when we can’t ignore the pain and the loss, and when we hurt deeply and when we cry, and when we’re all balled up with anxieties and tensions, can’t leave things behind, you know, then we think somehow we’re not really children of God.

But that’s not what a child of God does. He doesn’t, you know, just grin and bear it. He doesn’t try to deny the intensity of the loss and suffering that we go through as God’s children. It’s not pretending. A child of God does not mean we pretend that it doesn’t hurt, and it doesn’t pretend that these things aren’t real somehow and are really kind of off to the side of who we are as people. That’s not what it is.

And for the example of this, Paul in his epistle to the Romans points to the example of the Lord Jesus Christ in the garden. When we read that as children we cry out, “Abba, Father,” God wants us to go back to when the Son of God, the Son of God by whom we are adopted into the family of God—that the Son of God also cried out “Abba, Father.” When did he do it? When he was joyous, over worshiping God in the temple?

I mean, he could have when things were going great. Maybe when he needed some counsel. “Abba, Father, help me understand things as a dependent child of God,” and the incarnate Jesus. No, that’s not what the Gospels tell us. The Gospels tell us that the one place when Jesus demonstrates his sonship and cries out “Abba, Father” is when he is overwhelmed with loss and grief and suffering, as he contemplated what he was going to do, as he was in the garden of God, about to reverse the whole flow of humanity and about to bring in the new creation.

He understood what was needed for that to happen. He knew what was going on. He knew that he was entering into a deep period of loss and suffering and tribulation. So Jesus in his loss, in his suffering, in knowing what he was going to have to go through—he was going to go through death, betrayal, separation from his Father—and as he looked at this and prayed in the garden, he cries out to his heavenly Father, “Abba, Father.”

Now that’s a very clear picture that the kind of loss that leads us to wailing, distressful prayer to God the Father, saying “Abba, Father,” is not a moment of joy or exultation. It’s in a moment of great loss, distress, suffering—not sinful anxiety, but a recognition of the pain that the trial before him would bring upon him and was already a man what he was in his life. The scriptures tell us that he was a man of sorrows, that in his very life he had sorrow upon sorrow, loss upon loss.

In the incarnation itself, think of the loss from one perspective of taking on sinful humanity and walking around in a sinful world among rebellious men. He humbled himself to death for sinful people. He took upon himself the sins for us. So Jesus’s life is actually a recognition, and in the garden we see the ultimate result of this loss, when he feels this tremendous loss and suffering, when he’s deeply troubled, and that’s the point at which Romans 8 is pointing us back to recognize the marks of our sonship.

So this tells me that it is the loss and suffering that we are so upset about—because we don’t think it means we’re children of God. We think it means the opposite. Maybe God doesn’t love us. Our sins are great in our own eyes. Maybe we just never really can cut it as faithful Christians. But the opposite is true. The loss and suffering, trials and tribulations are actually demonstrations to us. When we cry out to God in the way of the Spirit, in the way of Jesus, as we reflect Jesus’s life in ours, by crying out to our Father in the midst of these losses, we are walking in the spirit of Christ.

Facing the certainty of his own profound loss, Jesus knows God’s goodness, God’s plan. He knows how this story will turn out, right? Jesus was fully aware of the characteristics of God, existed in all eternity with him. He knew his doctrine. He knew it was all going to work out. Does that mean that he doesn’t suffer and cry out in his pain, his emotional pain and suffering, and his loss? No, it means the very opposite. Those things are not intended to cause us not to cry out to God and acknowledge our loss and suffering, to not cry out to God in the midst of that. Rather, it’s the opposite.

We read in Luke 22, verses 41-44: “This he was withdrawn from them, the disciples, about a stone’s throw, and he knelt down and prayed, saying, ‘Father, if it is your will, take this cup away from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but yours be done.’” Now, that’s from the Luke version. Mark 14 says, “And he said, ‘Abba, Father, all things are possible for you. Take this cup away from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but what you will.’”

So this is the moment—the only time when Jesus cries out “Abba, Father, Father.” This is what we’re being directed back to in a discussion of Paul and him instructing us on what it means to walk in the spirit of Jesus, in the Holy Spirit, as sons of him. This is what he points us back to. We’re in Christ. We are to suffer with him. And in his suffering, he gives us the example of what suffering and loss is, how we’re to respond to it.

And we’re to respond to it not by bucking up, not by remembering our doctrine first and foremost, not by just making it all right and ignoring the pain, but rather in that very pain, crying out, “Abba, Father,” as his children. And then we read that an angel appeared to him from heaven strengthening him.

So God answers these prayers. Then, in being in agony, he prayed more earnestly. Then his sweat became like great drops of blood falling down to the ground. When he rose up from prayer and had come to his disciples, he found them sleeping from sorrow. So if I were to lay this out for you, it begins and ends with him and the disciples in their prayers. It moves in on either side. He talks about “take this cup from me,” and then he talks—it reveals to us that he sweat like drops of blood. So we’ve got the blood and the cup that we see pictured here before us. And then at the very center of that little chiastic structure is the angel coming to strengthen him.

So when we need strengthening, this crying out “Abba, Father” is what Romans 8 points us to and tells us that our losses are actually involved in the assurance of God that we are suffering with Jesus, and because of that, we are to be assured of our sonship before God.

Just like Jesus, we know in the Bible from the doctrines of the Bible that whatever we just went through or are going through that creates so much pain for us is the will of God. We know that. We know that eventually everything will work out in the end, right? We have assurances of that, right? So we’re like Jesus. We know these things. And we think that knowing these things mean we shouldn’t experience deeply, with great pain and frustration, losses.

That our health should not be a big deal if it’s going bad. That the betrayal of relationships and friendships shouldn’t be a big deal because we know these things. We know it’s all going to work out. Calvinists—we believe in the sovereignty of God. There was no other way ultimately for things to have happened. God’s most wise, most powerful, most loving. And so we know intellectually these things.

But that still—Jesus knew all those things. But it didn’t prevent him from crying out. In fact, he knows that is what he is to do in times of loss and suffering—is to cry out, “Abba, Father,” affirming his relationship to God as a child of God. So that’s what we’re to do as well. This is the way of the Savior—is not to meditate upon the intellectual doctrines of the faith and as a result think it’s no big deal.

We can just buck up. We can move on. It’ll all work out in the end. No, we believe those things, and then we think, “Why does this hurt so bad? Why can’t I get away from this thing? Why can’t I just put it away from me because of these truths that we know about God?” Well, and then we think that’s sin. But it can’t be sin. It’s exactly what our Savior did in the garden. He knew it all. Knows it better than you or I.

And yet he felt deep anguish through the pending loss that he was in the midst of. And in that deep anguish, it was completely proper, right, wholesome, and beneficial to cry out to his heavenly Father. So to feel these losses is not sin. It’s not an absence of faith. Okay? We think somehow we must not have enough faith when we suffer through losses. But surely Jesus had enough faith. Surely it’s not sin to experience deep loss and to cry out to God.

Actually, faith is turning to the only source of comfort and assurance and meeting the deep needs of our soul. Faith actually results in experiencing these things and then crying out to God. That’s an evidence of sonship, not a cause to suspect we’re not sons or that we’re somehow wrong and sinful. We remember Jesus. We walk in his way. That’s what Jesus did. And God answers his prayer.

An angel came to strengthen him. Does that mean everything goes okay? No, it doesn’t. Because immediately after that, the next verse is he prayed more earnestly in the midst of his sufferings. God strengthens us, but that doesn’t mean that he takes away the felt need we have to cry out, “Abba, Father.” You see, so the strengthening of God will come to us, but that doesn’t mean the loss and the suffering will come to an end yet, or quickly. So that’s the path of Jesus.

Faith is not an emotion. Not being at peace is not necessarily an absence of faith. Not struggling with trials—faith doesn’t mean we have no worries, that we have no difficulties. It doesn’t mean that we’re always supposed to be happy emotionally. That’s not what faith is. Faith is the assurance that we are children of God and that God is using the very losses and sufferings that we tend to create doubt in ourselves with to assure us that we are children of God.

I think that’s what these verses plainly teach. When we’re honest with our suffering and our losses, then this is God showing us that actually we are walking in the path of Jesus. That’s an expression of faith in response to the deep sufferings we have, as we suffer with him, to cry out to God. That is faith. It doesn’t mean it’s an evidence of not being God’s children. It tells us explicitly that we are children.

And it means that in the midst of our loss, we turn to the only source that can hear these things and minister to us as God promises to do. So we’re joined in our sufferings with him as an evidence of our sonship, right? Says in verse 17 again, as I just read, “If we’re children, then heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with him.” So we’re to be united to him in his sufferings. We suffer with him.

I was thinking of that Christmas carol—”A Little Town of Bethlehem”—”Be born in us today.” Our lives are an expression, a reflection of the life of our Savior. That’s who we are. We’re Christians. We’re reflections of his life. And that means that in these losses and sufferings, we’re united to him in his sufferings. We’ll look at this again at communion. But it’s very interesting that the two texts that we use, where Jesus initiates the Last Supper and then when Paul reflects his commands, in both accounts we read of Jesus’s death, of course, but we also read of Jesus’s betrayal, because that’s a deep significant loss.

And when we suffer—you know, betrayal, when we suffer loss of relationship, loss of reputation, loss of life, whatever it is—it means we’re suffering with Christ. And it’s an assurance to us that we are united to Christ and are joint heirs with him. Jesus’s own suffering and losses are being expressed, we could say, in our sufferings and losses. That’s who we are now. Our life is in him. We suffer with him.

And we are walking then in the spirit of Christ. And the same sustaining grace and help that he got from the Father, the triumph of love seen in Christ, is seen in our lives. You may not think about that. The loss seems so overwhelming. But you know, it’s funny. People can go through betrayal from a loved one, a spouse, a parent, the very people that are supposed to be protecting and nurturing us, or a friend.

We can go through that betrayal and it can be so devastating, and we can not want to trust people ever again because if we trust people and open ourselves up to people, then we know we can get hurt again, and we don’t ever want to go through that again. That’s suffering with Christ. But you know, it’s interesting because over time, people do open up again. They do go through this period of tremendous loss.

They cry out to God. And eventually, you know, as Christians, we get to the place again of opening up and letting people in again. And there’s a little voice in our head saying, “It’s better just to wall yourself off.” But we don’t do it. Do you know why we don’t do it? Because Christ is in us. Because we suffer in him, in his sufferings. But we also live in him. We’re raised up with him. We have the glories of Christ reflected in our lives.

So the reflection in our sufferings is true. And just as true is the fact that Christ’s life, his obedience through those sufferings to God and in resolving those things, the resurrection life of Christ, is reflected in us as well.

We have—I have, as other people, as we get older—have tremendous physical sufferings and loss. I mean, it would be ridiculous to start listing all the losses that I’ve experienced through my health, and I’m not alone. It’s—I was talking to Jack Phillips yesterday, and you know, it’s like when you get to stages of life very—God is doing various things, and it seems like 60 plus is finishing school, and one of the big ways God finishes us up in our character is to give us declining health, losses. Losses, and somehow you just don’t want to go on, right? Somehow you just think, “Well, what’s the point?” But you do go on because your life is reflecting both the sufferings of Christ and his glory and his life, his resurrection life.

The death and resurrection of our Savior is reflected in our lives through the Holy Spirit. The Spirit causes us to cry out to God and feel losses, and the Holy Spirit blesses us through those things with the ability to go on in spite of the problems. You know, some people have losses of the peace of mind, right? They have very agitated thoughts going on. They can’t control their brains, whatever, and they have problems, losses, suffering, right?

And it’s compounded because other Christians are going to say, “Well, you know, just buck up. I don’t know why you’re worried so much about all these things. Just stop thinking them. You know, just control your mind,” whatever it is. And so you’ve got that loss compounding the other loss that you go through depression. There are people who struggle mightily with depression, and it doesn’t help for you to tell them that you don’t struggle with that or that depression is just somehow a lack of faith in God.

That’s not true. I know it’s not true. The Psalms are a reflection of the personality and character of David, and he was a blues sort of guy. He was a depressed kind of guy a lot of times. You don’t read a lot of happy psalms. They come to resolution and joy, but they’re not—they don’t begin there. And it’s not because of David’s sin. It’s because those were the particular trials and losses and difficulties that God was using in David’s life to reflect the losses of the Man of Sorrows.

And to reflect also that in spite of that, you keep going. You do get out of bed eventually. You do manage to move ahead away from the loss, suffering, depression, and the temptation to just give up, because our lives are reflecting Jesus in both our sufferings and in our working our way through those things, crying out to God and as well him strengthening us.

Our life is a reflection of God, and that’s why we persevere. Why we find ourselves as Christians going through the losses and then going through those losses to continue and get back on the track of trusting people, getting out of bed, whatever it is, coming to a peacefulness of mind enough to serve God in your particular calling and vocation.

We lose loved ones. Again, this is an increasing reality as people age. And we lose loved ones who are deeply important to our lives—parents, relatives, people we love and have worked with for years. We lose them, and we lose children sometimes. And God doesn’t want you to just feel good about all that. God is intending the losses to cause you to live the life of Christ by experiencing the great despair of those losses and crying out to him.

And when we feel as difficult as we feel and cry out to God, it’s not an evidence of the lack of sonship. It’s an evidence of our sonship. And so God brings us the life of Christ both in the sufferings and then in how we process those sufferings, crying out to God, and eventually going on.

We do this because we’re holding on to Jesus Christ when we come through these things, and eventually open back up, get out of bed, move on in spite of our health, keep walking even though it hurts every step of the way. You know, going through the things that bring not just physical pain but loss of reputation as people evaluate your declining health—sometimes, you know, the statements that declining health must be the judgment of God. You’re Jonah instead of Job. We keep moving ahead because Christ is in us. Christ, the Spirit of Christ is a demonstration of our lives in Christ, that we are indeed beloved children of our heavenly Father.

So this is actually then all confirmation that you actually are a child of God. And when we cry out, it’s not a failing, it’s not a sin, but rather it is a demonstration that we are living the spirit of Christ.

Secondly, and there’ll be one more point after this one, secondly, we process the losses and we move on because we know it’s going somewhere. We know that God in his love and sovereignty is actually bringing these losses. If we don’t always focus on ourselves and our shortcomings—of which there are a manifold number—but if we understand what we’ve just read in Romans, then we know that all of this is going somewhere. We persevere. It’s a demonstration that we’re children of God when we know it’s not just an end in and of itself, the suffering, but rather God is using that to move ahead.

Let me read from Romans 8:21-23, a little later in the text. “Because the creation itself also will be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groans and labors with birth pangs together until now. Not only that, but we also who have the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, eagerly waiting for the adoption, the redemption of our body. For we were saved in this hope, but hope that is seen is not hope. For why does one still hope in what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we eagerly wait for it with perseverance.”

Now, so God says we have these groanings. The Spirit carries these groanings, prays for us when we don’t know how to pray. We have these losses. We have groanings that result from them. We don’t even know what to cry out to God other than “Abba, Father.” And the Spirit carries our groanings. And that these groanings have been connected up to the birth pangs of the new reality, the new creation. So what this means is the things that we groan over, suffer over, our losses and difficulties and trials, are related in the text to the birth pangs, the groaning and sorrow of birth pangs, right?

And birth is difficult. You know, anybody that has a wife that’s had children knows how difficult that is. The wives know how much pain and suffering they’re going through. But they also know—or maybe they’ll forget—that in the midst of their birth pains they should be reminded that this has an end, and the end is very good—joy that a child is born is what the end of all that suffering and loss is.

You know, that’s one of the things now that men, that husbands do, in the kind of increasing involvement of husbands in deliveries—is to understand what the wife thinks will help her as she goes through the delivery pains, and then to remind her of those very things, right?

Smith tells the story of a woman having great difficulty in her delivery, such pain, doesn’t know what to do. Her—you know, I guess her mind goes kind of blank, and frequently moms delivering kids, this is what happens. They just are overwhelmed by loss and suffering, the same way that I can get to the point in my physical difficulties—sometimes I’m just overwhelmed, and that’s all I can think about is the pain.

And husbands are now being encouraged to remind their wives of things that somehow get lost in the great difficulty and travail of childbirth. Well, it’s the same with our difficulties, our trials, our losses, our pain. The Holy Spirit prays for us. We don’t know what to do. We’re overwhelmed with the loss. We don’t know what to pray. But the Spirit of God prays with us, and we’re being reminded that this is all the birth of something that God is doing in our lives.

So once more, the loss and the extreme pain and suffering that we go through, in all the things that might affect us—it’s actually an evidence that we are persevering through it because we know it’s going somewhere. It’s going to result in things. And the commissioning Scripture, right? The trials create character in us. It creates perseverance. It creates longsuffering. These are fruits of the Spirit.

The Spirit is using our losses not to cause us to doubt our sonship, but to rather affirm our sonship and then to actually understand that we’re actually being moved ahead through these horrible births to something new in our lives—the development of Christian character. So God is using these things. It’s going somewhere. And that’s what we need to remind ourselves. We need to remind our spouses, our friends who go through deep suffering.

At the right time, “This is going somewhere.” In this story that Smith talks about, this woman in tremendous pain—the nurse just says over and over again, “He’s coming soon. He’s coming soon.” And so, you know what? That’s an evidence again of sonship. And it’s a reminder that the pain and difficulty is not an absence of faith. It’s God at work bringing forth some new character quality. It’s Christ being born in us, right—in the sense that the life of Christ is being reflected in our sufferings and in our perseverance.

And God is giving us renewed Christian character. He’s giving us more of Jesus. And so our suffering understands that and then agrees with God in it and gives us perseverance through the difficulties. So we have these two ideas held in tension: that the pain is really painful, but it goes somewhere, and where it’s going is something wonderful.

A revelation again of the Lord Jesus Christ, who we are united to in his sufferings and in his glory. We’re getting to the end point. We’re not to be escapists. We are to be realists, and that means acknowledging the pain and also acknowledging that it’s going somewhere because we are the children of God.

Finally, God cares for us. Again, in the text in Romans, it moves on to say these things in verses 37 to 39. “Yet in all these things, and all our sufferings and all of our losses, we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels or principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

This immediately follows a verse that says, “As it is written, ‘For your sake we are killed all day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.’” In other words, the point is he’s talking about loss, tremendous loss—loss of safety and life, and that those who are against us sometimes were our friends that we went to the temple with, Judas and Jesus. And we have tremendous loss and suffering, and that’s the precursor, that’s the lead-up to the statements that we read: that we are more than conquerors in Jesus Christ, because the love of God is assured to us.

When we suffer loss, one of the great temptations, one of the real difficulties we struggle with, is “Does God care about me?” You know, there’s a verse in the Psalms—I mentioned it when we talked about seeking the peace of the city. To seek the peace, the word “seek” doesn’t just mean pray. It means to be very committed to something, to be desirous, to be connected to a thing, to try to seek it and accomplish it. David says in one of the Psalms, “No one desires, no one cares for my soul.” That’s what we’re tempted to believe. And the most profound loss would be giving into the temptation to think that God doesn’t care about us. We all feel that at times. “Well, look what I’m going through. He doesn’t care. He’s turned his eyes away somehow.”

But again, this text counters that, doesn’t it? It says, “In the greatest losses we can suffer—of being tortured and persecuted, whatever it is, being turned in by the very ones that were our disciples or our loves, the lovers of God with us on our path, Judas and Jesus.” When we go through those very sufferings, it’s evidence that the love of God is poured out in us, that he really does care.

And so rather than give into the temptation to believe that God doesn’t care for us, this text tells us in that very suffering, the love of God is poured out on us. We are assured by God as we cry out to him with this one question that we groan with the most, most importantly: “Does God really care for us?” God says, “Yes indeed, I really care for you.” It’s an assurance of that, even though we’re tempted to doubt it altogether.

So, you know, God evidences us being the children of God in the very losses that we suffer. He evidences the Holy Spirit groaning with us, reminding us that we’re actually—this thing has a good end. Something is being accomplished. And he tells us that in the midst of those trials and tribulations and our deepest losses, when we’re tempted to doubt the love of the Father for us, the love of God is actually being poured out to us throughout those very actions.

And so we’re more than conquerors because we’re united to Christ in his sufferings, but we’re also united to Christ in the resurrection, the joy, and the glory of those things. God’s answer to us when the question comes in deep trouble—in these last few verses of Romans—is the answer of God to us, that nothing can separate us from the love of him and from his love for us rather.

Nothing can do it. He’s answering the real things that come up in our hearts—that are not evidence of lack of faith, but evidence that we actually are children of God, crying out to him in these things. He’s telling us nothing can separate you from the love of God in Christ. Nothing can separate us. It’s right to cry out with our tears. God says, “You can trust me. This pain is going somewhere. Your suffering matters, and it won’t—it isn’t an indication of your sinfulness or waywardness. It will be answered by God the Father because of his love for you.”

The parent of the child tells him, “I do love you. Nothing can separate you from my love.” That’s what we’re to do as parents. And that’s a reflection of God the Father with us.

I mentioned before this story that Smith tells about when he was on vacation. His child falls off the bed, gets a big gash in his head, middle of the night, little country town, goes to the hospital. Doctor asked the kid, “Do you want to play ‘bug in a rug’? You like games?” Kid said, “Sure.” And so he puts him on a cot, wrapped around with a sheet, wraps it real tight, and then starts stitching up the kid’s gashes in his head. And of course, the kid feels betrayed. He’s got great pain. He’s screaming. He’s yelling. Plus, he’s had now—because the doctor said this would be a fun game, and you know—so that’s who we are frequently when we find ourselves in those situations.

And in that situation, Smith’s wife can’t do anything to get him out of the situation. She knows he’s being helped by it. She knows it’s got a good end in mind. And all she can do is what she did, which is to sit there next to the child and tell him over and over again, “I love you. We love you. I love you.” And that’s what God tells us in Romans 8 as well.

Finally, these sufferings and trials and losses are a doorway—maybe the only doorway from one perspective—into the very life of the Trinity. You’ll notice as we went through these things that these losses are actually proof of our sonship, of our being in Jesus Christ, because as the Son of God, he suffered as well and he cried out to the Father. And then, secondly, we talked about the groanings of birth pangs and how the Holy Spirit groans for us and prays to the Father, and through Jesus as well.

And then in this last section, we looked at the Father’s love being assured to us in the midst of these sufferings and trials. These losses that cause such great pain are actually a doorway into the very life of the Trinity—the Son, the Holy Spirit, and the Father. That’s the ultimate goal: that we enter into sonship through the very losses that we enter into new things being done and character developed, that this is going somewhere through the groanings of the Holy Spirit accompanying our groanings in the midst of our loss and struggles and trials.

And we’re assured in that life of the Trinity that this is all done through the love of the Father and that nothing can separate us from him. Nothing can make the Father stop loving us as his children. This is the life of the Trinity, and that’s the life of the Trinity that we enter into through losses—maybe the only way really, ultimately, to enter into that aspect of the life of the Trinity—is through those kinds of losses.

That’s what God is accomplishing: a relationship entering into the very life of the triune God.

Let’s pray. Father, we thank you, Lord God, for our losses, our pain, our grief, our sufferings. We thank you for assuring us of our sonship, assuring us that the Holy Spirit is using these things to develop his fruit in our lives, and assuring us that as children of yours, you’ll always love us. We pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen.