While We Still Were
Roots in Romans
Since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us. For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. Indeed, rarely will anyone die for a righteous person-- though perhaps for a good person someone might actually dare to die. But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners, Christ died for us.
Romans 5:1-8
If you heard my sermon last week, you know that I’ve been regularly watering a garden for the first time, and reflecting on how God’s blessings of grace just pour out on all of us like water and all that. Now I don’t want to be a one-trick pastor, but as I was hanging out there again with the hose one evening this week, I did find myself getting curious about roots, straining to remember what I learned in high school. What is it that they’re doing? And also, what could I possibly say that a congregation of farming families hasn’t heard?
At first, all I was thinking about was how roots hold the plant in the dirt. They make the plant secure in the ground. And that’s true, but then I learned I had been thinking about roots in a shallow way. As I learned—because I’m a growing little plant too—that is just the effect of what they do. More primarily, what roots do is seek water.
Sometimes I feel like my entire life has been just trading one insecurity for another, depending on where I live and who I’m around and comparing myself to. I don’t have as much money as that person, not as successfull as that guy, don’t look as good as those people, aren’t as smart as them, don’t love God as much as them, and even worse, I’ll never be a real Vermonter.
When we try to get roots in things to make us secure, we are really thirsty for the waters of grace. Because God is so gracious and pours out so much grace, we can find little versions of grace in lots of places that can make us secure in lesser ways, and if we are so dry and thirsty, that can feel like the only place God’s grace lives. So to get secure, we set our roots down in money (after all, stocks are called “securities”), or maybe our looks if we have them, maybe our career if we like it, maybe our tribe if we know them. We can get even realer and deeper roots that soak up the real good stuff of God’s grace, the secure roots of family (if we have them), or the roots of a place and being a real Vermonter (if we are one).
Deep down, we know these things aren’t fully securing roots. We know they’re vulnerable, hard to come by, and fragile to be lost again, or we wouldn’t cling to the soil with them. If they weren’t hard to come by and weren’t fragile to being lost, we wouldn’t hold onto them so tightly. Eventually things change. We take a devastating financial loss. We lose someone. Our health slips, then slips again. If we’re graced, we have more roots in Christianity and our church to help us in those hard times.
But even then, in our long journey as disciples, we may find that even our roots as a Christian are more fleeting than we thought. Oh, we know all the lines about living by grace alone and not by works, but sin can be stubborn and sneaky and find ways around our taglines. We might want to make ourselves secure in how joyful of Christians we are, or how hopeful in Christ we are, or how much we’ve studied the Bible, or how we never miss a prayer at mealtime, or we never say a curse word, or we always do the right thing or have the right opinion about what Jesus said. And then, because the devil loves to have us look at each other even when we’re supposed to be looking at God, the insecure comparing creeps back in. Why isn’t my faith as strong as the saints? Why am I not as good a person as these other church people seem to be? Comparing doesn’t always make us look like a shy form of insecure, but arrogant insecurity, too. “How could they think that?” “Why can’t they just get it together?” But eventually this turns back on us, “Why can’t I just get it together?”
It’s a common experience that we might find ourselves in the pews feeling what’s called “imposter syndrome,” feeling like a total phony going to church. But you know what? We’re kinda all imposters. And Christ died for us anyway.
That’s what our brother Paul tells us today in one of the “mic drop” moments of Scripture. “While we still were sinners, Christ died for us.” If you were to imagine the Bible as one giant complex classical arrangement, it’s like one of the motifs that has been building throughout the Old Testament all the way through the gospels and keeps coming back around, and finally the strings vibrate the melody again: “While we still were sinners, Christ died for us.”
This is the water our roots are really thirsty for, the most liberating news of it all: there is absolutely no other place our roots can fully withstand and grab onto and really be secure but in the waters of the blood of the Lamb that are poured out for all of us by no merit, for our roots cannot draw the water we need from our own human goodness. We draw living water from the one whose rain falls on the righteous and the unrighteous alike; for this reason, Jesus tells us, you must “love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you if you want to be children of your Father in heaven, for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous.” (Matt 5:44-45)
In the first part of Romans, Paul talks about the sins of those who are ungodly outside of the Church, to where you can almost hear cheering, “Yeah, get ‘em!” But then he twists it all around and says to his friends in the Church, “So what’s your excuse for how you act?” In Romans 3, he quotes Psalm 14 and 53, reminding us, “There is no one who is righteous, not even one; there is no one who has understanding; there is no one who seeks God.” (Rom 3:10-11). But now, he says, “While we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. … God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.” (Rom 5:8)
Our security is in his anguish, his scars, his cuts, in the life he gave up. Our security is in how deeply insecure God made himself, completely vulnerable all the way to the cross, and did so for everybody. And because ultimately our God who made earth and is not of it, whose grace is in nature all around us but is not himself natural, we cannot get to him through the natural but through the supernatural doorway of faith. Right before this, Paul has told us how Abraham, our forefather in blessing, is not our ancestor based on his uprightness, for he was not a perfectly upright man; he had no Law to follow, and if he did, he wouldn’t have perfectly followed it. No, Abraham is our ancestor in faith. Faith is the only root system that can connect us to the living water by giving us a relationship with the living God alone. “The promise depends on faith, in order that it may rest on grace.” (Rom 4:16) And this promise is for everybody.
But even then, our faith will struggle. Our roots will falter. And it won’t make a difference to God’s love, because while we still are sinners, Christ dies for us. When our faith is still weak, Christ still dies for us. We think of the Good Samaritan as helping the person in the ditch, and the person in the ditch is always our neighbor and someone who we should be helping whenever we walk by them. But the story of the gospels is that Christ also dies for the priests who walk by the man in the ditch. For when the religious people who walked by the man in need, they didn’t just turn away from a person, they turned away from the water they also needed. And Christ still died for them, “the ungodly,” the Pharisees, the Roman empire, and your enemies too.
We know deep down how radical this is (“radical,” by the way, means “rooted”). You don’t really need me to tell you how radical this love is. “Indeed,” Paul says, “rarely will anyone die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person someone might actually dare to die.” (Rom 5:7) I was thinking about this line, and thinking about how our veterans are so worthy of honor because they have dared to die for good people. They even die in service of people they don’t know, even die for people they know don’t like them. That’s amazing love. And and an even deeper is Christ’s love, for Christ didn’t die for his country, he died for his enemies. And “while we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, and much more surely, having been reconciled, will we be saved by his life.” (Rom 5:10)
So the next time you are feeling anxious and insecure in the slightest, put out your root hairs for God alone and know that he has always been grabbing hold of you. He is “the ground of all being.” There’s nothing you can do to earn his love and nothing you can do to unearn his love. You are his treasured possession (Ex. 19:5), it is he who made you, and you are his. (Ps 100:3)
When we feel that deep in our bones, and the waters of that grace soaking our roots, then God can do amazing things with your heart. We can even begin to “boast in our afflictions” because we are rooted so deeply that nothing, nothing, can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus. (Rom 8:39) Rooted in God’s grace, even our sufferings produce hope that is beyond shame, because our only source of pride is that “God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.” (Rom 5:5) And his love has been given to every one of us. Remember that with each other when times get hard.
When we live in insecurity, we make moral compromises to hold onto the fleeting securities. But because we have been gifted with the deep roots of faith in God’s grace, we can seek justice, love kindness, and walk humbly even when it’s hard and scary because we don’t need to hold onto any of the false securities, as important as they are. We can give from our securities of having enough money, food, or even things like emotional stability to those who can’t make ends meet, don’t know where they’ll eat, and don’t know how much God loves them because nobody has ever really shown them that love. You received without payment, now give without payment. That is our call as Christians, to give from the deep, deep security we have in Christ Jesus to those who need it.
For while we still were who we are, Christ dies for us all. Amen.
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