Romans 8:35-39 “Separation Conquered”

Here’s my fairly literal translation of these verses:

³⁵What will separate us from the love of Christ? Affliction or distress or persecution or hunger or nakedness or danger or sword? ³⁶Just as it is written that, “On Your behalf we are being killed all the day; we are accounted as sheep of slaughter.” ³⁷But in all these things we are being more than conquerors through the One loving us. ³⁸For I am persuaded that neither death nor life nor angels nor rulers nor things present nor things to come nor powers ³⁹nor height nor depth nor any other creation will be able to separate us from the love of God which [is] in Christ Jesus, our Lord.

Note in these verses that Paul asks a question, then answers it. The question in v.35 is, “What shall separate us from the love of Christ?” The answer in v.39 is “Nothing shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Once again, this is the whole point of the whole discussion that has been going on since Romans chapter 1. This is the point of the Gospel, to get us here – absolutely assured that God loves us, that He is for us, and that we can live absolutely secure in this infinite, fathomless love.

Pause a minute and just think about this thing of “separation.” It is actually a terrible thing. In a sense, we could say the whole point of the Gospel is to conquer this horrible terror we call “separation.” Is it a horrible terror? Perhaps I should ask instead, is it not? Is not separation a horrible terror that mercilessly and constantly haunts us and hunts us all? What is death itself, but separation in every way? How we fear for the lives of our loved ones and friends! We live our lives dreading “that phone call.” I just heard last week of a young man who was killed in an automobile accident, leaving behind a fiancé looking forward to their marriage soon. My mother’s family was all but wrecked by the death of her brother as a young man.

My two best friends I ever had on planet earth, Jim Dowell and Felix Sampayo, both died of cancer. They’re gone. I don’t like that they’re gone. I don’t want them to be gone. Our dog Buddy got old and had to be put to sleep. I still miss his scruffy face after twenty some years. I could go on … and on and on … and I know so could you. Separation. Yes, it is a horrible terror.

However, we could go on. It isn’t just death that separates. We’re all keenly aware that, at any time, any loved one or friend could decide they “don’t like us” and be done with us. It has happened too many times to all of us. Sometimes relationships can be mended, but too often they simply cannot. It takes two to tango. Then there is simply the physical separation. It hurts to say good-bye, to know that for a time we won’t see someone we love. It hurts. Sometimes deeply. Esther and I were traveling together once until we got to Philadelphia, where her plane took her on home to Jacksonville and mine back here to Illinois. All I could do was sit down on the floor and cry my eyes out. Even now that brings tears to my eyes.

Separation. It’s awful. Even for us ourselves, what is death but a separation of body and spirit? Our spirits rise to return to the Lord while back on earth they bury our bodies to lie moldering in our graves. Jesus will of course return one day to raise those bodies and restore us to the complete human beings (body + spirit) which we were created to be, but until then, we live in that totally unnatural state of a disembodied spirit.

Then there is the Cross itself. What was Jesus’ most awful cry from the Cross? “My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?” Separated. The Son separated from the Father while He bore the infinite wrath of God against the sins of the whole world. That separation is so awful we can’t even comprehend it. Martin Luther agonized over those words. “God separated from God! How can it be?” he exclaimed. That, we have to say, is simply another fathomless matter. The good news is that it happened, but, may we note, what Jesus was conquering was separation itself! Because He was willing to be separated from the Father, now we sit reading, “Nothing shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord!”

No wonder, in our troubles and trials, we have this natural fear that somehow God will “give up” on us. Separation constantly haunts us and so we fear it applies even to our relationship with God.

So, let us not run past Paul’s question, “What shall separate us from the love of Christ?” The question is addressing one of the most fundamental realities of our human existence, or should I say, one of the most fundamental terrors? But what is the Good News? That we are “More than conquerors!” That Jesus conquered death and so He conquered separation. Although, in this sin-cursed world, separation goes on being the terror that it is, at least this one relationship – the only one that really matters in the end – is infinitely secure! And where does that infinitely secure relationship get us? Heaven! A place where there will be no more death, no more parting, no more sorrow, no more tears and “so shall we ever be with the Lord.”

Reading these words in Romans chapter 8, may we not miss the enormity of what Paul is saying. May we let this wonder of God’s love fill every corner of our tired, aching hearts. This terror we call separation is a conquered foe. Yet a little while and Jesus will come to “restore all things” and you and I will get to live on forever freed and never again to have to shed a tear!