On A Bridge Over A Creek

 

 

Sixty years ago, sometime in the spring, I stood with my friend Tommy on a small bridge overlooking a wooded creek in the Twinbrook area of Rockville, MD. I took my New Testament and Psalms from my shirt pocket, opened it to Romans Chapter 8, and read aloud:

 

What shall we then say to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us? He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things? Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God's elect? It is God that justifieth. Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written, For thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter. Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us.

 

For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

 

My voice was excited as I read, and Tommy’s face glowed as he heard of God’s love for us. Tommy was my best friend, and as I was coming to know Jesus it was natural that I would share Jesus with him. A coworker at my after-school job had shared Jesus with me, it never occurred to me not to share Jesus with Tommy and others.

 

When I first read Romans 8 and its marvelous crescendo, I read it again and again and again. (I have quoted from the King James Version in this reflection, for the King James is what I first read in those early days). I couldn’t wait to see Tommy and read it to him.

 

That was 1966, today, in 2026, as I read Romans 8 once again, I am still excited. How many times have I read this passage? How many times have I quoted it? Times beyond number, perhaps as the sand of sea and the dust of the earth and the stars of the sky. This is one of my most-quoted passages to congregations, to small groups, and in conversations with individuals – it is a natural as breathing to me. I suppose I could say that it is my breath of life in Jesus Christ.

 

It is also what we seem to have missed. We’ve missed it in our churches, in our seminaries and Bible schools, in our small groups, and most certainly in our engagement with the world around us. We have missed the message that God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, so that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.

 

We have twisted and turned and traduced the Gospel into a worldview, into defective and murderous foreign policy, into nationalism, into sociology, into politics, into an industrial religious cash machine…into any number of things…and we have missed the sacrificial love of God for us in Jesus Christ and we have failed to communicate it to our people.

 

I am at the age where I get to write, “I have lived a long time,” and I will tell you this, the one thing people need to know, whether they are “church” people (God help them and us!) or folks who haven’t a clue about Jesus and religion, is that the Father and Jesus love them. I have never been in a congregation which didn’t need to know this, I have never taught or preached to a people who didn’t need to know this, I have never worked in business with others who didn’t need to know this, I have never had a neighbor who didn’t need to know this.

 

All of our theology, all of the sociology that we’ve imported into the church, all of our slick religious marketing, all of our music, all of the “stuff” we do so very well, means nothing unless we know the love of God in Jesus Christ our Lord. People do not need a better worldview, people need to know the love of God in our Lord Jesus Christ.

 

If we knew the love of God in Christ Jesus, we would be aghast at much of our behavior, we would be shamed before our Lord and our fellow man…and we would be of some benefit to the people around us…we would offer them some hope.

 

There are those who think that when we read the Bible aloud that we ought to read it in a monotone, perhaps the way we’d read a technical manual. Frankly, that is crazy. If we can read Romans 8 in a monotone, then we have never received a love letter, a passionate Valentine’s Day card, and we ought to be checked for a pulse. The Father has given us the Bible to be our book, it began as His Book and He has given His Book to us…and it ought to possess us and we ought to possess it.

 

O dear friends, we are called to follow Jesus, to love Him with all that we have and all that we are and to share His glorious love with others. As a lad I learned Psalm 73:25, “Whom have I in heaven but You? And besides You, I desire nothing on earth.”

 

Is Jesus our love, our passion, our reason for living? Are we sharing His love with others? Do we realize how deeply God loves us? Are we living cruciform lives?

 

If Jesus isn’t everything, then Jesus isn’t anything (Mark 8:34 – 38).

 

Why not read and reread and then read again Romans 8:31 – 39? Why not make it “your passage” for the next 30 days? Why not allow it to live within you? Why not share it with others?

 

Who will you read Romans 8:31 - 39 aloud to?