No Condemnation in Christ, Part 4: Conquerors With God

Throw on some armor and saddle up!

Here we are, in the final piece on Romans 8; we've been exploring the ways this chapter speaks mercy and grace to sinners.  In the last post, we looked at the fact that not only are we Christians forgiven in Christ, we actually have a glorious destiny.  Now we're going to look more into this amazing reality.  

"We know that all things work for good for those who love God, who are called according to His purpose.  For those He foreknew He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, so that He might be the Firstborn among many brothers.  And those He predestined He also called; and those He called He also justified; and those He justified He also glorified."

Romans 8: 28-30

Those who serve God are chosen.  God, Who lives outside of time, was able to determine, even "before" the beginning of time (He "foreknew"), those who would choose to love Him, and from His eternal vantage point He made it their destiny to be glorified.  This doesn't mean that we must be perfect and sinless in order to be counted in that number.  If we love God, which to be sure does include a desire to please and serve Him, then even though we stumble and fall, He justifies us.  

Our enemy, the devil, will continue to oppose us throughout all of our Earthly lives.  He and his minions will tempt us to do that which displeases God, and will always try to tear us away from our glorious destiny.  We can't give up the fight, for we know from other scriptures that only "those who endure until the end" shall be saved.  So we can't take our destiny as being "secure no matter what," because certainly God's foreknowledge, by which He has destined us, was a foreknowledge not of those who would love Him only for a time, but for those who would love Him through to the end.  However, we can rest assured that, so long as we do love God, and keep holding on, Satan cannot win:

"What then shall we say to this?  If God is for us, who can be against us?  He Who did not spare His own Son but handed Him over for us all, how will He not also give us everything else along with Him?  Who will bring a charge against God's chosen ones?  It is God who acquits us.  Who will condemn?  It is Christ Jesus Who died, rather, was raised, Who also is at the right hand of God, Who indeed intercedes for us.  What will separate us from the love of Christ?  Will anguish, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or the sword?  As it is written:

'For Your sake we are being slain all the day; we are looked upon as sheep to be slaughtered.'

No, in all these things we conquer overwhelmingly through Him Who loved us." 

Romans 8: 31-37

No matter what sort of weapons the enemy uses against us, so long as we cling to our Lord, the evil one can't stand against us.  He may win battles, and we may find ourselves cast down into the pit.  But we will always rise again, our rising modeled on the rising of Christ, the Firstborn.  If we are "looked upon as sheep to be slaughtered," then we will also rise again just like the Lamb Who was slaughtered.  This doesn't only apply to our physical rising after our bodily deaths--many of which have indeed come at the hands of enemies of the Faith--but also to our spiritual rising whenever our souls have died, temporarily, through sin.

Satan cannot keep us down, the grave of sin cannot contain us when we trust in God, Who will raise us from the dead.  We rise, time and again, to glory, by the Grace of God whenever we repent and avail ourselves of His forgiving power through repentance and confession.  No power in the universe could stand in the way:

"For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor present things, nor future things, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord." 

Romans 8: 38-39

That is the beautiful truth, and the reason that even Satan himself, despite his deviousness and his power, can't deprive us of our rights as children of God.  For God is infinitely more powerful than even the most magnificent or potent of creatures, including the prince of darkness.  This same God, Whose power knows no bounds, loves us, and it is His unfailing will that we should be with Him forever, that we should reign with Him, if we simply love Him.  That's the consolation and the hope we have.  That's why, no matter how bleak things look, no matter how often we fall into the snare of the enemy and find ourselves discouraged, we have the guarantee that, so long as we are willing to keep up the good fight, we will prevail.  God never fails.

And that is truly good news for a sinner such as I.

The Terrifying Bliss of Being Vulnerable

We've all got things that make us ashamed; things that make us feel especially rotten compared to other people, and that isolate us.  There are things that make us think that our friends and families will treat us differently.  We're terrified of letting anyone find out, yet at the same time some part of us wants someone to know.  And why?  Because the only way to calm our fears that we would be abandoned or mistreated by anyone who knew our secrets is to prove our fears false by revealing those secrets and being treated just as well by our loved ones as we always were.

That's vulnerability.  It's one of the most terrifying things we'll ever do, yet it's the key to feeling fully loved.  After all, isn't God the ultimate model of love?  Who can imagine believing that God Himself only loved us because He "didn't know all our secrets?!"  That's a pretty depressing thought!  As if the Creator of all the universe was only one shocking revelation away from giving us the cosmic cold shoulder!

Whatever He found out about Antarctica must have been scandalous!

But if we know that Love Himself loves us even in the knowledge of all our faults, then the ultimate expression of human love is to have relationships where we can trust our loved ones to do the same.

I'm not gonna lie:  I am no good at this.  Oh, I've been blessed with a few incredible people who have never batted an eyelash at any secret regret or struggle I've shared with them.  But even with these people, I continue to find that whenever I open up a little bit more, I stress and obsess over what the response is going to be.  I end up in a sort of limbo, not knowing if I'll be rejected, or if this amazing person in my life will start treating me differently.  Maybe they won't reject me.  But maybe they'll pity me, start to act differently around me.  Let's say I had just opened up about my same sex attraction to a guy:  What if he starts pulling back from me, constantly afraid that every little thing he does will be a temptation to me?

Terrifying.

But the rewards are amazing.  That moment when you realize that your being vulnerable has changed nothing, or has actually changed things for the better, is a bliss like few other things in the world.  To know that you can really be known, and still be loved.  It's beautiful.  I'm definitely not saying that you should rush out and publish all your deepest secrets to the world.  And I'm not saying you shouldn't use your own judgment when deciding who and how to tell about the things you hide the most.  I'm just saying that, although the risks are great, the rewards--when things go well--are much greater.

"Well That Escalated Quickly..."

...is what you'll be saying when I admit, in only my second post, that I happen to be attracted to men.  I'm also, as I said before, married to a woman, and happily so.  Add to that the fact that I'm a practicing Catholic who actually believes what the Catholic Church teaches* (hey, what a novel idea, amiright?), and you start to put together the picture that although I'm attracted to men, the gay lifestyle is not for me.

Now, this is not a topic that I intend for the blog to be exclusively about.  I'm bringing it up so early on because I know it's a topic that could make some readers squeamish.  And yet the topic does have a pretty big impact in my life, so you can expect to read more about it in future posts.  So it's better that you brace yourself for it now, so that those of you in the "People like that should really just keep it to themselves" crowd can run, post haste, for the hills.

Screaming Optional

A few things to get out of the way, now that this actually-common-as-dirt revelation is out there (I mean, it seems rather popular these days for men with same sex attraction to blog about it, so am I really breaking any new ground here?):  Yes, my wife knows.  Yes, she's known since before we dated.  Yes, we're happy.  Yes I really do love her, and I do enjoy our "private" life.  No, you can't have her.  Whatever your gender may be.

How does this impact my life?  Well, there's the obvious:  It can present a cross, a source of temptation, the proverbial "thorn in the flesh."  Mine is not a pretty, pre-packaged success story.  This has caused some real pain, some real struggles.  I've known guilt, shame, and failure, I've stared them each in the face, shaken hands with them, and walked away feeling the grimier for it (Where's the Germ-X when I need it?).  

But thanks be to God there has also been beauty, things I'm not sure I would have ever known if I didn't have this struggle.  I've experienced real love from some of the people closest to me.  Not the condescending "I love you anyway" love, and not the superficial "I love you because there's nothing wrong with two men sleeping together" kind of love (honestly, what's so earth shatteringly generous about loving someone whom you don't think is ever tempted to do anything wrong in the first place?); no, I've known love that puts a face to Christ's love.  

My brother has told me that he's not sure he would want me any other way, because he likes the way I am.  I found one of the best friends a guy could ask for because we both share this cross.  I've made profound connections with others, through commiseration and fellowship, whom I would have never even met if I'd never known what it was to be attracted to other men.  I wouldn't trade that for the gift of being "straight."  I've also experienced amazing proof of my wife's love for me, by her bearing patiently with me in all this, that it takes some couples years to have truly tested and proved in their marriages.

And finally, it's thanks to the same sex attractions that I have been more open to something that is a passion to me, something that I will probably blog about often:  Close male friendship.  In our society, there are still vestiges of a taboo about two men being extremely close.  If two men love each other, are affectionate with each other, need each other, and make no apology for it, it's still at least mildly suspected of being "more" than friendship.  And many men are afraid to really let themselves feel that.  "What if it means I'm gay?"  Well, for me, that ship has long since sailed, so I feel free to just admit to myself my deep emotional need for the male friends closest to me.  That means all the world to me; and I suspect I would have held back if not for my same sex attraction.  

But it doesn't really matter whether I accept this cross or hate it.  It's mine to bear, so I may as well learn to appreciate whatever good it can offer.  Fortunately, I'm pretty sure God knew what He was doing when He allowed me to be burdened with it.  

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NOTE:  If the day comes when you're reading this as someone who already knew me, especially when I was a kid, and you think this is "obvious news," please give this other post a read.

* The Catholic Church teaches that sex is intended to be only between one man and one woman who are married and who do not deliberately render the sex act infertile; this obviously means people in my shoes are not supposed to act on any sexual desires we have for the same gender.  Part of being Catholic is to accept what the Church and Scriptures teach, so I do.  This doesn't mean I've been perfect at following those teachings throughout my life, it just means I submit to them as true and valid and that I, not the Church or Scriptures, am in the wrong if I stray from them.