In 'the deep end': the safety of God's Word

I’ve been preaching through Romans 9-11 recently.  They are hard chapters.  Important chapters, but hard.  And they demand the very best thinking we’re capable of.

The first week was Romans 9, probably the hardest of the three.  That night at church we had some guests with us at church.  Some were not Christians.  Some were young Christians.  And here they were, listening to a sermon on Romans 9.  Talk about being thrown in the deep end!

In the wash up during the week that followed, some people actually asked whether church was the place for dealing with passages like Romans 9.  After all, most weeks we want to expect that there might be guests there.  Perhaps difficult chapters like this should be dealt with elsewhere, so that on Sundays we can just concentrate on teaching people the basics of the faith.

In some ways, it makes sense.  I understand the instinct.  In the end, though, I am concerned that to make such decisions would be to not trust in the goodness of God’s Word.

The idea that Romans 9-11 is ‘the deep end’, though, got me thinking about the image of God’s Word as a swimming pool.  And if we think of it that way, what we need to remember is that the whole pool is safe for us to swim in!  It’s safe because it’s God’s Word to us, and God’s Word is truth.  Which means we won’t come to harm by ‘swimming’ in it.

Yes, there might be a deep end, like Romans 9-11: places where we have genuine questions, and where it’s hard to work out the answers.  Even so, we still won’t come to harm.

As I kept working through the chapters, though, I realised we could use the image another way.  Because right in the middle of these very challenging chapters we find Romans 10:9-13, where Paul explains in unmistakably clear detail what we must do to be saved.  And therefore, even at the deep end, the water is clear for us to see through.  This is very important for us to remember.  And so Paul teaches:

That if you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved. As the Scripture says, “Anyone who trusts in him will never be put to shame.” For there is no difference between Jew and Gentile—the same Lord is Lord of all and richly blesses all who call on him, for, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”

I have found this image of God’s Word as a swimming pool a useful one to carry in my head.  Those who heard it in one of the sermons seem to have found it useful as well.  As a church it’s given us a shorthand way to talk together about the depths of God’s Word, and the depths of God’s wisdom in salvation.  This is a good thing, because after all, it’s where Paul ends up in Romans 11:33-36! 

And yet this image has also allowed us to maintain alongside these truths a clear sense of the goodness, as well as the safety, of God’s Word.  This is the really critical thing if we are to continue in the ministry of the gospel.  And it is the critical commitment we must maintain if we are to see God continue to call people to himself through the gospel of his Son.