The verse that I have in mind tonight is verse 6, but we are going to read the verses around it so that we get a sense of what is being covered in this verse. We will start at verse 1.
Romans chapter 5 and verse 1:
“Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom also we have access by faith into this grace in which we stand and rejoice in hope of the glory of God.
“And not only that, but we also glory in tribulations, knowing that tribulation produces perseverance; and perseverance, character; and character, hope.
“Now hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us.
“For when we were still without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly.
“For scarcely for a righteous man will one die; yet perhaps for a good man someone would even dare to die.
“But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
This is the key verse that I want to focus on tonight:
“For when we were still without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly.”
Another way you could say this is that it was while we were powerless to help ourselves that Christ died for sinful men.
I am thinking tonight about our desire for control.
We recently went to England a couple of weeks ago. We had a great trip and really enjoyed it. But one of the things that struck me as I thought about that trip was the degree to which you can at least try to control every aspect of a vacation or a plan that you have for the future.
Obviously, we booked our flights ahead of time. That is pretty normal. We booked our Airbnb. But while I was waiting in the airport for the plane, I received a notification saying, “Your bag has been loaded on the aircraft.”
I do not remember ever receiving that before. Usually, you just hope that your bag makes it there. It is a bit of a surprise when you arrive and discover whether it actually did. But now there was some certainty.
Of course, you can track whether your plane is on time. You can even use an app that tells you whether the incoming aircraft your flight is going to use has arrived. If that plane has not arrived, you are not going anywhere. It gives you the certainty of knowing, “Okay, my plane is here.”
When we arrived at Heathrow, I had already planned that we were going to take the Elizabeth line from Heathrow to Liverpool Street Station. When we came out of the station, what was the first thing we did? We opened a phone, entered the address of the hotel, and started walking.
If the little arrow was moving in the opposite direction from the hotel, we turned around and followed the path in the right direction.
Many aspects of travel are now controlled and set out ahead of time. It makes you wonder how we travelled before smartphones.
This desire for control is something that we try to engineer into our lives generally. We arrange things so that we have them under control and know how they are going to play out.
Yet, if you are honest, you have to acknowledge that some of your best experiences in life are things you did not plan at all. They seem to happen entirely by chance. They are experiences you enjoyed that you could not have arranged ahead of time, yet they happened that way.
We have this strange situation in which we want to control everything, but sometimes it is not in our best interest to control everything.
I have been reading a book by a German philosopher named Hartmut Rosa. The book is called The Uncontrollability of the World. He says that we try to make the world controllable at every level.
We have this illusion of control. We feel as though we should be able to control everything, and we become frustrated when we cannot.
The reality is that you and I were not meant to control everything. We think that more control means less anxiety and more pleasure, but often the reverse is true.
Technology is not our friend here because it increases both the feeling of control and the desire for more and more control in this world.
The verse we have read brings us back to reality. I think this verse helps us understand our experience in the world.
Notice that it says, “When we were without strength.” In other words, we are not in control. We are powerless. It is at that very point that the verse says:
“Christ died for the ungodly.”
I want to think with you about three things that we learn from this verse.
First, there is the illusion—the illusion that you and I are in control and that we can make things happen on our own.
Second, I want to consider the reality—the reality that God is in control. Again, I think our verse illustrates this.
Third, there is the dilemma that every person who hears the gospel and reads this verse faces:
Will I surrender to God’s control, or will I persist in my attempts to control my life?
The Illusion of Control
We try to make the world controllable at every level. In one sense, that is not totally wrong.
There is a natural instinct built into us. We were meant to control some things.
If you go back to Genesis chapters 1 and 2, you read about God creating the heavens and the earth. You read about Him creating man and woman, putting them in the garden, and giving them control—giving them stewardship over that place.
They were clearly meant to have dominion. The Bible actually says that. They were meant to be in control of the space and context God had given them.
God built that desire into us in that sense.
But our desires became disordered. Our desires went wrong.
We do not have to wait very long in Genesis. By chapter 3, everything has gone wrong very quickly.
Adam and Eve grasped for something they did not control and did not possess. Only one chapter after God had given them so much, they wanted something He had not given them.
Think about that scene in the garden. They had an ideal environment, and they had a lot to do. It must have been a big job to care for all that God had created. It was not as though they were bored.
Yet they were still grasping for something God had not given them.
They wanted more control. They extended their grasp and tried to take what God had not granted to them. Their desire for control became extended and distorted.
Our sinful nature means that we are not satisfied with the God-given rule we have been granted. We want more. We want complete control.
In fact, we want to be God ourselves. We want to take the place of God and make all the decisions.
A Christian writer named Chris Martin says:
“Our self-serving sin is that we want to be gods ourselves. Part of the reason this temptation is appealing is because to be like God is to be like the only ultimately powerful One, and we trust no one but ourselves with ultimate power.
“We see injustices or other kinds of disorder and brokenness, and though we would never say it out loud, we are thinking that God is taking too long to fix it. So we take and eat the fruit over and over again.”
We do what Adam and Eve did. We go beyond what God has ordained.
This desire for control permeates every area of our lives.
Think about parents raising children. They naturally want to set their children up for success. Parents can become very involved in ensuring that success—not only while their sons and daughters are children, but through high school and university.
I was reading about the president of a college. When he took on the role, he expected to deal with adolescents and university-aged students coming into his office and complaining.
He said, “What I didn’t expect was to be dealing with their parents.”
But he was.
There is a desire to engineer everything so that it works out in the way we want.
Then you go to the other end of life: death.
Death is the ultimate thing that we do not control, but that does not stop us from trying.
Some people are trying to achieve a kind of immortality through their lifestyles so that they can live longer. Others say, “I cannot stop death, but I am going to control when and how it happens.”
That is euthanasia. That is medical assistance in dying. It is a desire to say, “I am no longer content for God to have that role. I want to take some of it for myself.”
No matter what stage of life we are in, this desire for control consumes us.
Technology does not help us here. It promises to reduce uncertainty and speed things up, and we become conditioned to expect this in every area of our lives.
But it is a false hope. It actually makes us miserable. It is not how we were designed to live.
We become acutely aware that we cannot control the most important things in life.
Think about relationships. To some degree, they are uncontrollable.
The most important and significant things in life—even moments of extraordinary beauty or clarity—cannot be engineered. They simply come.
This is a reminder that we do not control everything in this world, nor should we.
Even more concerning is the way we apply this desire to the spiritual realm.
We think, “I should be able to come to God on my own terms. I should be able to control this relationship with my Creator.”
But the Bible confronts that desire very clearly. This verse says it very bluntly:
“For when we were still without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly.”
It does not mince words. It says that we are without strength. We are powerless. We have no control, and we are weak when it comes to our ability to relate to God.
Notice how the verse ends:
“In due time Christ died for the ungodly.”
That is not a very flattering picture of you and me in our sins.
We are without strength. We cannot control the world. We cannot even control ourselves.
We are unable to deal with our own problem of sin. If you have ever tried to make a new start, turn over a new leaf, or reform yourself, you become acutely aware of the grip that sin has upon us.
The Bible speaks about us being slaves to sin. That is a reality in our lives.
We are without strength, but our verse also says that we are ungodly.
We are not like God. Despite the fact that we attempt to usurp God’s place, those attempts fail just as they failed for Adam and Eve.
Our attempt to rebel against God and take His place tells us that we are ungodly, because God does not do that.
God is not grasping for His place and trying to make sure He is in control. He simply is in control. There is no question about it. He is not wondering about or questioning His authority.
Think about the Lord Jesus here on earth. Here is someone walking in this world, but you never read of Him grasping for control.
Philippians speaks about this. It says that He did not think equality with God was something to be grasped after. He already possessed it. He is God, and He knew it and declared it to the people around Him.
Our attempts to be like God and grasp what is not ours are, in their very nature, ungodly.
There are eternal consequences to our ungodliness, our sin, and the heavy burden that has already been mentioned tonight.
We are accountable to our Creator, but we have ignored Him. We have gone our own way.
God’s wrath is going to come upon those who are ungodly. The Bible is very clear about that.
The wrath of God will fall in a coming day of judgment. God’s will is going to prevail. He is in control of the world, and He is in control of judgment.
He is going to exercise perfect and complete judgment upon this world.
If you are not saved tonight, that should give you pause. It should make you stop and think.
Consider the judgment of God that is going to come upon the ungodly. It is a serious thing. The thought of God’s wrath and God’s judgment against sin should make us tremble.
But it is actually good news that we are not in control and that we are without strength, as this verse tells us.
That reality forces us to abandon our own efforts and turn to God—the only One who can deal with our sin.
We have thought about the illusion of control. Now I want to think with you about the reality that faces us: God’s perfect control.
The Reality of God’s Perfect Control
God is in control. He always has been, and He always will be.
I think our verse emphasizes that fact because it says:
“In due time,”
or:
“At the right time.”
This verse is describing a rescue mission—God coming down to rescue sinners from their sins and ungodliness and to bring them to Himself.
When it says, “At the right time,” it tells me that this was not a spur-of-the-moment decision on God’s part.
It was not as though He suddenly woke up and said, “We have to do something here. This is getting out of hand.”
No. God had planned this from the very beginning.
It was also not as though God said, “I need a plan B. Plan A for creation did not go well, so now I need a backup plan.”
That is not the case at all.
The Bible is clear that this salvation—this rescue mission—was planned long before the creation of the world.
It happened at the right time. God’s timing was perfect, and His work was planned.
It was the right time because it was also when we were without strength.
I really appreciate this: God does not wait until we get everything together. He does not wait until we clean up our lives or muster up our own strength.
That reminds me that what we are talking about tonight is God’s salvation.
It is not my doing. It is God’s doing. It is God’s work. It is His initiative from the beginning.
The whole business of saving people is His work. It is something He does.
