When We Are Powerless Series

Jesus Is Still Sovereign

Romans 5:6-11

When We Are Powerless

“I am cooped up. I feel powerless.”

“The restrictions keep changing so quickly. I feel powerless.”

“I have a much higher level of anxiety. I feel powerless.”

Powerless.

That is a feeling we have experience more in these past weeks, isn’t it.

Personally, I don’t like it.

Sitting in my office thinking about the impact this is having on so many people who I love and care for. Watching people struggle, and fear, and worry, and retreat, and isolate, and get angry, or frustrated, or feel hopeless.

Constantly thinking about what-if’s, and maybe’s, and holding pattens, and safety, and needs.

For me it is a time in my life when that sense of feeling powerless has been one of the strongest. Yet for all the powerlessness attached to this current situation, there is a situation in all of our lives where we are even more powerless.

Romans 5:6-8

6 You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. 7 Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. 8 But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

These verses speak into our lives today as we recognise that Jesus Is Still Sovereign when we are powerless.

These verses also speak to us as we think about the Lord’s Supper and the powerful work of Jesus which coming to the Lord’s Supper possible.

The powerful work of Jesus involves powerful planning. The death of Jesus happened “at just the right time”, (Romans 5:6). His death wasn’t an accident, or the result of Him being the unfortunate victim of human hatred and injustice. Jesus’ death was the culmination of a carefully thought-out plan that He and His Father voluntarily set into motion.

A plan which included sending Jesus from His powerful and glorious position in heaven to become a helpless baby.

A plan which saw Jesus born to a teenage Jewish virgin and raised in a carpenter's home.

A plan which meant Jesus lived a perfect life as He taught God's truth in a way that no-one else had taught it before.

A plan which, at just the right time in history, saw Jesus choose to die.

All pre-ordained. All carefully thought out. All done to a schedule.

Why is such a well-thought out, well-timed, well executed plan necessary?

It is because a powerfully timed plan was needed in response to the deeply hopeless situation of humanity.

“We were still powerless,” (Romans 5:6).

Powerless. That is an over-riding description of humanity. It is not a characteristic we like having applied to us is it.

We would rather be called “worthy” … where we have attributes that are of great value to God.

We would rather be called “necessary” …. where our characteristic are acceptable to God.

We would like to think there is something in us which God identifies … then God sends his Son because God somehow needs us.

But that is not what Scripture says … not at all.

When we were powerless … while we were sill sinners … Christ died for us.

John 3:16

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

God the Father prioritises us over his Son … but not because we were somehow worthy of such priority. We are given priority because of God’s love. God’s love … not our value, or worth, or capacity …. God’s love is the reason we have hope in Christ.

We are weak, helpless spiritual wimps, unable to do anything for ourselves. If left to our own devices, none of us is able to do even one small thing to please God or earn our way to heaven. We try. God knows we try.

We want to serve Him in worship.

We want to be people who are willing to live according to the Bible.

We respond to His Word by trying to take it seriously and living it faithfully.

We pray. We read the Scripture. We serve in the kingdom.

And those are all great responses. But that is not why the well-thought out, well-timed, and well executed plan was put in place.

The New Testament tells us that without Christ in our hearts we are …

… unable to understand spiritual things.

… unable to see the kingdom of God or enter it.

… unable to seek God.

Helpless. Hopeless. Powerless.

And loved!

A powerfully timed, powerfully executed plan … to bring salvation to the powerless. How should we respond to such a plan? Listen to this testimony from Paul