A Fact More Certain Than My Feelings
Where we have been
For three Sundays we held on to 1 John 3:19–20 — "God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything." That word comforted us. But comfort alone is not the whole of assurance. This Sunday Paul takes us somewhere firmer.
1. Assurance is not found by looking inside yourself
When assurance wavers, we look inward and start scoring ourselves — how much am I praying, how fervent am I, am I still moved to tears? The problem is that the measuring stick moves. A tired week produces a low score, and a low score produces doubt.
2. You have already been grafted into Christ
Romans 6:5 is the heart of this sermon. An older Korean translation rendered it as "following the pattern of his death," and many carried that reading for years — as if the Christian life meant copying Jesus well enough. But the word is not imitate. It is grafted.
Think of grafting. An old tree with deep roots. A young branch is cut, stripped, and bound to it. At first they are strangers. Then the sap crosses over, and the branch lives on roots that were never its own.
3. Therefore your resurrection is already settled
Verse 5 continues: "we shall certainly also be united with him in a resurrection like his." Do not stumble at the word "if." In Greek this is not a doubtful condition but a settled one.
This matters most to those of us past sixty and seventy. The body weakens each year. But the body that is failing is a body already grafted into the risen Christ. Death has no more dominion over him — and therefore none over you.