Who Will Separate Us?
35 Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will tribulation, or trouble, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? 36 Just as it is written: “FOR YOUR SAKE WE ARE KILLED ALL DAY LONG; WE WERE REGARDED AS SHEEP TO BE SLAUGHTERED.” 37 But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us. 38 For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, 39 nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Rom 8:35-39 NASB20
After all the things I have been through in the past few years, and that I am still going through, it seems I keep coming back to this passage. Looking back, I actually can’t remember a season where I didn’t feel like a sheep to be slaughtered. Even as a child, I had severe asthma and almost died several times. I remember thinking of heaven simply as a place where I could breathe freely. Life is always full of joys and full of suffering, usually at the same moment. My wife Betty was brilliant at always being able to focus on the things to be grateful for. Her tombstone actually has her favorite verse inscribed on it:
18 in everything give thanks; for this is the will of God for you in Christ Jesus.
1Th 5:18 NASB20
This is a discipline I would do well to follow; however I confess I do not often do this. Not like her.
However, I wanted to focus on something here that my experiences over the past few years have forced me to understand. He asks, “will tribulation, or trouble, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword?” What will separate us from the love of Christ?
Were it Up to Me
Were it up to me, any of these things and a thousand lesser ones would separate me from the love of Christ. If the rice in my refrigerator goes moldy, I suddenly doubt God’s love for me. Much less famine or sword! And for all of us, regardless of our wealth or poverty, our education or ignorance, our success in love or our loneliness, we will all experience profound tribulation. Not just in the end. All along. All of these things threaten to dissolve and render useless our love for God and for our neighbors.
But this is not the question! This is the most important observation here. Paul does not ask, “what will separate us from our love for Christ?” It is not a question of our love for Christ. Our love for Christ is fickle and weak and tepid and tenuous and largely a fabricated facade. The extremely true existential reality is that we do not love God.
10 In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
1Jo 4:10 NASB20
We don’t really take this seriously until we face such hardships and realize that we judge God, we blame God, we ask “WHY?!” You think, no, I would never question God! Try that as you watch your wife wither and die from cancer! As you face the devastation of your life in the aftermath of such a thing. You will be pressed into this ugly truth about yourself: you do not love God. You blame God.
Who Will? I Will!
And so you find yourself asking, who shall separate me from the love of God? I know who! I will! I will do it. I will separate myself from God. I beg Him, turn your gaze away from me (Psalm 39:13)! He should have been in control of things, and He set it up so my mother would get Alzheimers and her mind would rot away for years and then she would die in some place in a coma. But this is the way of all flesh. Why?! Why?! Why?! Why is this our story – every single one of us?!!! It’s so genuinely awful and wrong! It really is so awful. We should not live this way, with this terror hanging over our heads. And there is nothing we can do to remove it.
But the question is not, what shall separate us from our love for Christ. God already knows the answer to that! We will as a collective humanity always crucify Him. The question is different though. It asks, who will separate us from the love of Christ? It doesn’t matter if we hate Him so much that we crucify Him and kill – still He loves us! He immediately forgives His crucifiers as they are crucifying Him!
It’s Not up to Me, It’s up to GOD
The message of the gospel is not our love for Christ. It is not our service to Christ. It is not about our obedience. It is not about our fidelity to Christ. We do not have any of these things when it comes down to it. Famine and sword and tribulation and sickness and death can easily separate us from our love for God. But take heart! There is no circumstance, no hardship, no sin, there is not any created thing that does or could exist ever, that stop God from loving you!
Believing this and holding it dear is not your burden. This is not contingent upon you at all. In this sense you have died. Your virtue has been thoroughly disproven. Your service comes down to being a Christ-killer. You are worse than nothing. It is not that you have sinned. Your repentance is worthless. You are a sinner. In the deepest marrow of your being, in the very warp and woof of your thoughts and intentions and desires, you are deeply wrong. Your very conscience leads you to kill God. You are relieved from the burden of loving God. Your imagined virtuous self is a fiction – it has been crucified with Christ.
You are even relieved of the burden of believing that God loves you. You are truly too blind and stupid and narcissistic to love anyone, much less God. The message of the gospel is not that you ought to love God – that is not the gospel, it is the law! The message of the gospel is this: God loves you! Even as you crucify Him unjustly, in the moment of your worst sin, He is forgiving you. He loves you. You cannot stop it. You may believe it one moment. You may doubt it the next. You may rage against God. You may worship Him as the beautiful creator. But nothing can ever separate you of the love that Christ as toward you.
So what at first seems like a tiny gossamer thread of arcane theology – “the cross of Christ saves us” – becomes an ocean of warm soothing healing security. We are vastly and greatly loved without condition or threat of ending. We are infinitely and eternally loved. We have been loved from before the beginning of all things (Ephesians 1:4-5) We are indeed saved. We are saved from our judgment and rage and ingratitude and hatred. This does not mean that we will stop our sin and ingratitude and rage and judgment! No! It means that these things no longer define us. Even in our worst suffering, it is the persistent unstoppable love of Christ for us which defines us. Our suffering will end (2Cor 4:17), but God’s love for us will endure everything. It will outlast our judgment of God. It will outlast our worst and most deep-seated sin. It will outlast our sadness. We are more than conquerors because we are lavishly and richly and greatly loved by Christ.
The love of God is not in us. The love of God is in Christ. This is indeed our salvation! And so I find myself genuinely and truly grateful. To my great surprise and relief, I am saved.
37 But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us. 38 For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, 39 nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Rom 8:37-39 NASB20