“35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? 36 As it is written: “For your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.” 37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38 For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, 39 neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. ”
I have a list that I keep readily available. It is a list of fifteen distorted ways of thinking. Psychologists call them cognitive distortions. They cause me and many other people a good deal of harm and I fall into them. Many people do.
One of these fifteen is what’s called black and white thinking. This is when your brain tells you that unless you are perfect, you are a failure. Either I handle a conversation perfectly, or I did more harm than good. Either everything goes according to plan, or it is a disaster. There is no in-between. That’s black and white thinking.
Another of the fifteen is what’s called emotional reasoning. This is when your brain tells you that, “if you feel this way, it must be true.” If I’m anxious that someone was offended by what I said, they must have been offended by what I said. If I’m afraid that someone doesn’t like me, they must not like me. That’s emotional reasoning.
Another of the fifteen is what’s called catastrophizing. This is when your brain magnifies the potential for disaster. The girl that you are dating didn’t laugh at the joke you told? Not only was she offended by it, but she’s going to break up with you, she’s going to tell everyone else that you are a horrible boyfriend, and no one will ever date you again. You made a mistake at work? You will probably be fired and even if you aren’t fired, no one at work will ever trust you again.
I keep that list of fifteen readily available because I fall into those ways of thinking—not always, of course, and not even often, but when I do fall into them, they make life miserable.
People who fall into these ways of thinking spend a lot of time asking themselves, “what if?” They are experts in finding loopholes that open up any way in which they might be shamed or judged as wrong.
This Scripture before us tonight closes all the loopholes. It covers everything. It is a balm for anxious souls. It is a corrective to distorted thinking. Distorted thinking gets caught up in loopholes and the what ifs. This passage is undercuts them all. It takes pains to show that nothing you can imagine or couldn’t imagine can separate you from God’s love—all loopholes closed; all “what ifs” silenced. It covers anything and everything. Rather than anything separating you from God’s love, everything shows that you are kept in God’s love. That’s the claim of this sermon: Rather than anything separating you from God’s love, everything shows that you are kept in God’s love.
We will study this in two points. First: the inseparable love of Christ. Second: the inseparable love of God. We see the inseparable love of Christ in verses 35-37. We the inseparable love of God in verses 38-39.
First: the inseparable love of Christ. Distorted ways of thinking are ultimately about God. Black and white thinking has to do with psychology. It also has to do with how you see yourself before God. Catastrophizing has to do with psychology. It also has to do with your view of God’s providence. Distorted ways of thinking have a spiritual component to them because each of them implies a separation from God’s love. All people fear separation from God’s love, which is another way of saying that all people fear hell. People who don’t believe in God fear separation from God’s love; they just explain it without religious language.
People who love God fear separation from God. Some of Christians fear it because they don’t yet grasp how loved they are, which is why the apostle John told them, “perfect love casts out fear because fear has to do with judgment.” Other Christians are so assured of God’s love that they don’t live in fear, but they do fear separation from God’s love in the sense that they understand better than anyone else what a hell it would be to be separated from God’s love.
Christianity offers the only assurance that you will not be separated from God’s love. As verse 35 puts it, “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?” The courtroom language with which we’ve worked for the past few weeks is gone. Now we are now dealing with images of relationship. We are talking about love. “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?”
Paul presented quite a list of what seems as if it could separate us from Jesus’ love. ‘What if I was persecuted for my faith—would I stick with Jesus?’ ‘What if everything was taken away from me the way it was taken away from Job—where would my faith be then?’ ‘What if I found myself in hardship after hardship after hardship—wouldn’t such a horrible life be a sign of God’s wrath already?’
Paul listed seven threats to Jesus’ love in verse 35 and that wasn’t by mistake. Paul used seven to show that he left stone unturned. He used this number of completion to show that there really was nothing that could separate them from Jesus’ love. He was inviting the reader to insert anything and everything into this list. If you are a worrier, insert what you want. What is it that concerns you? What is it that frightens you? Put it in verse 35.
Paul experienced verse 35. He experienced trouble, hardship, persecution, famine, nakedness, danger, and the sword.” Scripture is not theoretical. It is quite experiential. Paul experienced all of this, which is only one reason that you should listen to him when he tells you none of it, and nothing you can imagine, can separate you from Jesus’ love.
As he told the Corinthians, “Five times I received from the Jews the forty lashes minus one. Three times I was beaten with rods, once I was pelted with stones, three times I was shipwrecked, I spent a night and a day in the open sea, I have been constantly on the move. I have been in danger from rivers, in danger from bandits, in danger from my fellow Jews, in danger from Gentiles; in danger in the city, in danger in the country, in danger at sea; and in danger from false believers. I have labored and toiled and have often gone without sleep; I have known hunger and thirst and have often gone without food; I have been cold and naked. Besides everything else, I face daily the pressure of my concern for all the churches.” He also would, of course, be executed at the hands of the Romans.
None of that separated Paul from Jesus’ love. In fact, it pushed Paul closer to Jesus. Perhaps the question you need to ask yourself is as you look at verse 35, are you afraid of these experiences simply because you are afraid of them or are you afraid of them because they might pull you away from Jesus? In other words, you afraid of trouble or are you really afraid that trouble might mean that God has taken his fatherly hand off of you? Are you afraid of hardship or are you afraid that hardship means that God has stopped caring for you day by day? If you are afraid of the seven threats of verse 35 in and of themselves, ask yourself why. If you are afraid of them because you fear they might separate you from God being for you in Jesus, Paul is telling you not to worry about it. What you fear will only push you closer to Jesus.
Karl Barth insightfully commented on this saying, “Even their tumult can only bind Christians more closely to him against whom that tumult is really aimed.” Those seven reasons to be afraid in 35 look a lot like Jesus’ life—“trouble, hardship, persecution, famine, nakedness, danger, sword.” These seven were really aimed at Jesus. In a very real way, this evil age is hates God and God’s Son and you just happen to be in the way. Sin is an offense against God and when you suffer someone else’s sin, you just happen to be in the way. In this you can recognize that nothing they threw at Jesus separated him from the Father’s love and nothing that can be thrown at you will separate you from the day to day love of God for you in Jesus.
To underline the fact that nothing can separate us from Jesus’ love, Paul went with the worst-case scenario. That’s what you see in the quotation from Psalm 44 in verse 36, ‘As it is written: “For Your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.”’
Psalm 44 is a heartbreaker which is also hopeful. It is the cry of a generation who hasn’t forsaken God, but yet feels forsaken by God. The Psalmist says to God, “You have made us a reproach to our neighbors, the scorn and derision of those around us. You have made us a byword among the nations; the peoples shake their heads at us. I live in disgrace all day long, and my face is covered with shame… All this came upon us, though we had not forgotten You; we had not been false to Your covenant. Our hearts had not turned back; our feet had not strayed from Your path… Yet for your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.”
This Psalm tackles the worst that life can throw at a woman. The woman has stuck with God, but it seems that God hasn’t stuck with her. That’s the worst situation imaginable; that’s, “for Your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.”
The Psalmist who felt that separated from the love of God also knew that, in fact, he wasn’t separated from the love of God. The Psalm ends with the words, “Rise up and help us; rescue us because of your unfailing love.” So the Psalmist questions God’s love and appeals to God’s love. That’s part of life.
It’s rather strange that we as God’s people fear that trouble, hardship, persecution, famine, nakedness, danger, and the sword might separate us from Jesus’ love because that list has long been the share of God’s people. As Calvin said, “it is no new thing for the Lord to permit His saints to be undeservedly exposed to the cruelty of the ungodly.”
Song of Songs might be the only book in the Bible that doesn’t deal with the question, “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?” It’s no wonder that as Doug Moo put it, Paul is “constantly concerned to show that the sufferings experienced by Christians should occasion no surprise.”
So why do sufferings surprise us? Why do we think that what didn’t separate God’s Son from God’s love will separate us? Why do our anxious minds look for some loophole in the love of God that somehow leaves us out? Why not say with Paul in verse 37, “No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us”? If you belong to Jesus, that is true of you. You are more than a conqueror. That word was used in other literature to describe, “total victory.”
During World War Two the allies demanded unconditional surrender from the Axis powers. They were not going to let Nazi Germany or Imperial Japan impose any requirements upon the peace. Christ demands unconditional surrender from all the troubles of verse 35. Jesus will not allow this pandemic to put any requirements upon him and his plan for you, and remember that his plan is to make you like himself and bring you to the new creation. He demands unconditional surrender from depression and cancer and family strife and shame. You know that he will get it. You know that because you know how the Bible ends. This is why you are a super-conqueror through Christ who loves you. This is why Paul could say that all things work for your good.
All things work for your good because of Jesus. You are more than a conqueror because he conquered; “in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.”
You are more than a conqueror not because of you but because of Jesus. I say that because some of us who struggle with cognitive distortions are already throwing up “what ifs” and other loopholes in the face of this victory. We are trying to figure out how we might mess it up. You can’t because mess it up because it wasn’t you who won it.
C.E.B. Cranfield penned one of the best commentaries ever on the book of Romans and the book of Romans has had quite a few commentaries written on it over the centuries. So when you deal with Cranfield on Romans you are dealing with one of the greatest of all time. Here’s what Cranfield had to say about this verse on being more than conquerors, “it is not through any courage, endurance, or determination of our own, but through Christ, and not even by our hold on him but by his hold on us, that we are more than conquerors.”
If you are given to morbid introspection, struggle with assurance, or think that you might fall into some of those cognitive distortions from the beginning of the sermon, hear those words again, “it is not through any courage, endurance, or determination of our own, but through Christ, and not even by our hold on him but by his hold on us, that we are more than conquerors.” If you belong to Jesus, nothing will stand in the way of that and nothing, nothing, is standing in the way of that right now. Just in case the point hasn’t hit home to your heart yet, Paul goes on in our second point: the inseparable love of God.
Paul gets personal at the beginning of verse 38, “For I am convinced that neither death nor life,” and the sentence goes on until, “nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Now Paul wasn’t unconvinced of what he wrote in Romans 1:18 or Philippians 2:13. He wasn’t somehow more sure of this sentence than he was of other Scriptures that the Spirit spoke through him. He simply wanted to add his “amen” to these words when he said, “I am convinced.” He wanted these Roman Christians to know that he had skin in this just like they did. He wasn’t asking them to believe something that he didn’t believe. He wanted them convinced that nothing could separate them from the love of God because he was convinced that nothing could separate him from the love of God.
To underline the fact that nothing can separate Jesus’ disciples then and today from the love of God, Paul listed ten powers that we fear might. “I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
As with the number seven in verse 35, this number ten wasn’t chosen at random. Paul didn’t make a list and then say, ‘hey, there’s ten of them, cool.’ He planned for ten of them. Like seven, ten drove home to the attentive reader the idea that the list was all-encompassing. Paul listed ten to show that all conceivable powers are to be included in this list. If you struggle with cognitive distortions, throw whatever “what ifs” you want into verses 38 and 39. Paul intended for you to throw whatever you wanted at these verses. He knows that nothing you can come up with can separate you from the love of God.
Death can’t. Paul started with the final enemy. He wasn’t just talking about martyrdom by saying that death can’t separate you from the love of God. He was talking about dying in an accident. He was talking about dying in a nursing home. He was talking about dying after a battle with cancer. He was talking about the death of someone else. Death can’t separate you from God’s love.
Life can’t. Nothing to do with death can separate you from God’s love and nothing to do with life can separate you from God’s love. That’s 100% of everything you will ever experience. As Paul later wrote in this book, “If we live, we live for the Lord; and if we die, we die for the Lord. So, whether we live or die, we belong to the Lord.”
That by itself would be more than enough, but Paul proceeds to tell his readers that neither angels nor demons can separate them from the love of God. There are forces at work in this world who wield power beyond what we can imagine. Angels are so glorious that people who meet them feel an urge to worship them. Demons are so aggressive and active that John calls their work in this world, “the beast.” They are far greater than you, but they can’t separate you from God’s love because God’s love is stronger than what’s stronger than you.
God’s love is stronger than time. That’s why Paul told these Roman Christians that neither the present nor the future could separate them from God’s love. Plenty of people think that their past can separate them from God’s love. Plenty of people fear that something that might happen in the future could mean that God doesn’t love them. Paul wasn’t one of them. He had a past. He knew it didn’t separate him from God’s love. He faced unknowns in his future too, but he knew that none of them could separate him from God’s love.
He knew that not even an uninterrupted future of suffering couldn’t separate him from God’s love as seen in Jesus. As Calvin put it, “we ought not to fear, lest the continuances of evils, however long, should obliterate the faith of adoption.” We can only hold on so long. God’s love for us doesn’t share our limitations.
Paul knew that no supernatural power could separate Jesus’ disciples from the Father’s love. As he put it, “nor any powers… will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” While Paul might be referring to political authorities here, he was most likely talking about spiritual forces. In our culture, we don’t pay a lot of attention to these. We don’t have much awareness of or regard for the unseen realm. The rest of the world is far wiser than us in this. They know there are forces that are hostile to humanity. As Brendan Byrne put it, ‘behind even such mundane things as hunger and nakedness, as well as the more overtly hostile pressure of religious persecution and threat of punishment from the civil authorities, stand the machinations of “spiritual forces whose control still lingers in the present, passing world.”’ There are enemies behind the enemies. This is where the real battle has always been going on. As Paul told the Ephesians, “our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.” There are forces at work in this life that none of us can explain, but even that which you can’t explain can do nothing to separate you from God’s love. God’s love is much stronger than you understand. You don’t understand supernatural realities, but don’t think for a second that you fully understand God’s love.
God’s love is stronger than what come after death. Paul most likely had heaven and hell in mind in the words, “neither height nor depth… will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
The Greek poets wrote about journeys in and out of the afterlife. Even if you wandered into hell like Dante, even though you couldn’t, you wouldn’t have wandered beyond the love of God. Children, perhaps you’ve found yourself lost. Maybe you were lost in Scheels. Maybe you were lost in the mall. It’s a scary feeling. You feel as if you’ve wandered to a place where neither dad nor mom can find you. You can never wander to a place where God can’t find you. You might think you are lost, but you’re not lost in his mind.
Paul rounded out his list by saying that, “nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” He’s already covered everything five times over, but just to be sure that we, in our distorted thinking, don’t miss the point, he draws a big circle and calls it “everything”; he says nothing in this circle can separate you from the love of God.
If you went to Paul for pastoral counseling and told him about your anxieties and fears, he would ask you if what you are worried about fell inside or outside this circle called “everything.” After you look at him as if he’s crazy for a moment, you would say, ‘well, anything goes in that circle, Paul,’ and he would say, okay, “nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
That includes you. If God has begun a good work in you, then you won’t separate you from the love of God. If you belong to Jesus then not even you will separate you from the love of God. As John MacArthur put it, “if I could lose my salvation, I would. I can’t keep my salvation, and neither can you. God must hold onto it for us.” This verse tells you that since He does hold on to it, nothing can take it away. God’s far better at hanging onto things than you are, and those things include you.
So nothing you can imagine, including yourself, is able to separate you from, as Paul puts it in verse 39, “the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Please note the difference between this love and the love we began with in verse 35, “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?” We began our study seeing that nothing can separate us from the love of Christ. We end our study seeing that nothing can separate us from the love of God that is in Christ.
You don’t really understand the love of Jesus until you understand that Jesus is God. You don’t really understand Jesus’ love for his disciples then and today until you realize that he is God. You don’t really understand Jesus’ love on the cross until you realize that he is God. And you don’t really understand the love of God until you see it in action in Jesus. You don’t fully know the love of God for sinners until you know Jesus. To know God, you need to know Jesus and to know Jesus is to know that he is God.
God has already dealt with anything and anything that might separate you from His love. That was the point of that list of seven and list of ten. That’s the meaning of this passage. If you still think that for some reason God will stop caring for you, your thinking is distorted. God’s love leaves no room for loopholes. His wisdom leaves no room for “what ifs.” The question really comes down to, “do you know God loves you?”
If you can’t say, “yes”, I beg you to consider, ‘why not?’ If you can’t say, “I know God loves me,” because you lack assurance, please listen to these four sermons on the end of Romans 8 again. There is enough in these verses to assure you.
If you can’t say “yes, I know that God loves me,” because you don’t love God, why not? Why don’t you love God? What is keeping you away? I would love to listen. It is clear that God loves you. It is clear that He is inviting you into His love. It’s clear that nothing will be able to separate you from that love. Now, if, in fact, what you want is to be separated from that love for some strange reason, then you will get what you want. You will get it for eternity. Please think it over again.
If you can say “yes” to the question, “do you know God loves you?” then nothing can separate you from that love and everything will be used for your good. There are no loopholes. There are no “what ifs”. Nothing can separate you from Jesus’ love. That is your life. Live it. Amen.