From Lost to Loved: A 30-Day Study of Romans 8Sample

Where is he?

Her mind couldn’t let the question go. A moment ago he was there, but that was before the pounding on the door. Before light knifed into the dark room and rough hands dragged her into the street. Where is he? No one speaks his name. No one questions his honor. Where is he?

Then the irony stabs because they have taken her to the temple. She laughed when she realized it, but it wasn’t joy-filled laughter. This was the hollow kind that leaks out when despair grows too heavy to bear. The temple summoned memories she tried to bury from when she was young and naïve enough to think men saw her for who she was rather than what she could give. That illusion died years ago, and now her life was about to catch up with the death of her innocence in this place she just couldn’t get away from.

But him—where is he?

And then another man appears, but it’s not him. They call this one Teacher. The crowd parades her depravity and disgrace. With hateful delight, they tell the Teacher of the Law’s demand: death by stoning. This Stranger lowers Himself to the ground, steady and deliberate, tracing the dust with a hand that does not tremble. The stones fall from their hands faster than they had broken through the door.

It's just her and the Teacher now. That’s when she realizes this Man is Jesus. When His eyes meet hers, she feels what she has not felt since she was a child in this temple: seen, accepted, and dearly loved. His voice shatters the silence with overwhelming mercy.

Her story is not an interruption to our study of Romans 8; it is its embodiment. We are the ones dragged out, accused, and exposed. We are the ones waiting for judgement and death. We lift our eyes to find a Savior bending low, steady and unhurried, testifying with His blood to what He declared with His lips. What she faced in the temple courtyard is what Paul declares on a cosmic scale. He puts words to a reality that stretches across creation and speaks to what this woman must have felt: “For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

REFLECT:
Where do accusations echo loudest in your life, and what makes it hard to believe Christ’s love covers that part of your story?