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!

Romans 8:35-39 “Fathomless”

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.

This is the pinnacle of the pinnacle. I know many others have already said it, but it just simply doesn’t get any better than this. I’ve spent several weeks just hovering over these verses. Other passages I’ve studied left me with that feeling like I need to take off my shoes, but with this one, it feels like the only appropriate response is simply silence. Silence just sitting in the presence of God.

Words utterly fail.

On the other hand, there are thoughts I do want to record. I guess I’ll simply write them feeling like I’m holding out a teaspoon of water standing on the shore of the ocean.

Love. God’s love. Speaking of oceans! How utterly amazing is it to climb to the very pinnacle of the pinnacle of the Bible and find there … God’s love! How infinitely comforting ought it be to us to find that love expressed to us in the context of our suffering? How infinitely comforting ought it be to us to find that this love is the pinnacle of the very Gospel itself? Romans 1-8 is the Bible’s most thorough presentation of our glorious Gospel, that wonderful message which is “the power of God unto salvation for all them that believe, to the Jew first and also to the Gentile” (1:16), starting with our terrible guilt, “For when they knew God, they did not acknowledge Him as God, neither were thankful” (1:21), only to finally offer us the hope, “But now a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known … This righteousness comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe” (3:21,22), finally arriving at 8:1 where we are assured, “There is therefore no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus!”

All of that glorious Gospel leads us where? To the fathomless, infinite love of God! Nothing shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord!

I want to pause and acknowledge that someone will read what I say here and be quite sure I’m “missing it.”  Someone will read this and want to add, “But, but, but …” and then add whatever they’ve decided is truly most important in Christianity. My answer would be simply this: Read the text. I didn’t write Romans 8. I’m not the One who made Romans 8:35-39 the pinnacle of the pinnacle. I’m not the One who arranged this presentation of the glorious Gospel to end here in this glorious announcement from the very throne of God itself, “Nothing shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

No. There is no “But, but, but …” Jesus wants every born-again believer to arrive here at the same point as me, sitting with your Bible open, in absolute speechless wonder awash in this fathomless security of God’s infinite love. “Nothing shall separate us …” This is the entire point of the Gospel itself, to get you here. In our immediate context, we’re being told all of this in the midst of suffering. We need this assurance in the midst of suffering! If, in our suffering, we lose our grip on this infinite, fathomless love of God, then we lose our hope and, in that, we lose our strength, and, then one way or another, we collapse under it all. There is hope if only we can convince ourselves this love is true and clutch it tenaciously to our hearts.

It is ours, straight from the hand of Jesus – this infinite, fathomless love of God. Lord, give us eyes to see it and hearts to believe it. May You in fact be our Shield and our Exceeding Great Reward – even when this world seems to hurl its evil our way!

Romans 8:33,34 “Freed”

Here’s my fairly literal translation of these verses:

³³Who will bring a charge against [the] elect of God? God [is] the One justifying. ³⁴Who [is] the one condemning? Christ is the One who died, rather even was raised from death; who is also to the right hand of God; who also is interceding on behalf of us.

Before I move on, there is one application of these verses which I have found enormously helpful over the years, and which I’d like to share in the event it might prove helpful to someone else. These two verses take us back to our opening verse of chapter 8: “There is therefore no condemnation to them that in Christ Jesus…” No condemnation. From who? From God Himself. No condemnation.

And once again, why is that important to know? Because we have the devil himself accusing us day and night, we live in a world filled with judgmental, critical people who would suck the very blood out of our existence, and then we have to live under the endless torture of our own consciences constantly reminding us of all our sins and failures.

I have tried to say often how important it is for us Christians to be deliberate encouragers, specifically because the people we work and live with are instead barraged constantly with criticism, sarcasm, and outright putdowns. For most of them, it is a very rare experience to have someone actually acknowledge them for the things they do right, the things they do well. Christians of all people ought to be the ones who can, like Jesus, look past people’s failures or weaknesses and actually value the person themself.

However, most importantly right now, I want to think about how that same critical, sarcastic world affects you and me. Basically, can we all be honest and admit that where it leaves us is constantly being tempted to worry “what do they think of me?” We worry about what others think of what we wear, which car we drive, what kind of house we live in, what kind of vacations we take. When we walk into a room full of people, we worry about whether they “like me or not.” I would suggest it is generally true, the reason why most people don’t like public speaking is for exactly this reason, that we worry to much about “what they think of me.”

Now consider our verses again: “Who shall lay anything to the charge of God’s elect? It is God who justifies. And who is he that condemns? It is Christ who has died, moreover who has risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, interceding for us.” So, when we turn to the Bible, we find this truth, that “God is for us.” We find that “There is therefore no condemnation to them that in Christ Jesus…”

Jesus stepped down into this condemning world and John tells us, “God sent not His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved” (3:17). The entire Plan of Redemption coming down from the heart of God is to save you and me from condemnation. As v.34 is reminding us, in Jesus’ death, burial, resurrection, and intercession, we are “accepted in the Beloved.”

In this same condemning world in which you and I live, what did Paul think all of this meant for him? Consider his words in I Cor. 4:3,4: “I care very little if I am judged by you or by any human court; indeed, I do not even judge myself. My conscience is clear, but that does not make me innocent. It is the Lord who judges me.” Paul took no account of others’ accusations. And not only that, he took no account of his own! “It is the Lord who judges me.”

Paul actually believed what he is writing to us in Romans 8:33,34. “There is, therefore, no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus.” This truth that “God is for us” allowed Paul to live in this condemning world, but to rise above it. Notice even what he says in the words, “I do not even judge myself. My conscience is clear, but that does not make me innocent. It is the Lord who judges me.” What is he saying? As far as he knows, his conscience is clear. As far as he knows, he’s “caught up” acknowledging his sins. However, all of that does not make him innocent. None of it means anything when it comes to this condemnation business. And why? Because “the Lord is my judge.”

The Lord knows it all. He sees it all. He knows the absolute truth of who we are and what we’ve done. He is the only One who truly knows whether we are “innocent” or not. And who is He? “It is God that justifies.” He is the very One who has declared you and me to be righteous in His eyes – not because we are, but because Jesus paid it all. Jesus took our condemnation.

So now, it isn’t a matter that I don’t fail. It isn’t a matter that somehow I need to hide from God and the world all my sins and failures. It is a matter that, in my relationship with God, His response is not to condemn me. No, His entire intention, as we learned in vv. 28,29, was that “we should be conformed to the image of His Son.” As Jesus said to the woman, “Neither do I condemn you. Go and sin no more.” Like any good parent and their child, even correction itself is not about condemnation, it is about redemption. Jesus didn’t come to condemn us. He came to fix us. Even His discipline is intended to “Yield the peaceable fruit of righteousness, for those who are exercised by it” (Heb. 12:11).

So then, God is my judge. Not the devil. Not other people. Not even myself. What matters is what God thinks of me. As far as my sins, He doesn’t “condemn” me for them, He would help us rise out of them. And back to the pig and the lamb; although pigs may love to wallow in mud, sheep do not. Sheep may fall in the mud. Perhaps on a hot day, they might for a brief time even enjoy the cool mud, but they cannot stay there. A sheep is not a pig. And so it is with us.

These wonderful truths would actually liberate you and me from all of the condemnation of this world, including even our own, even the truth of our sins and failures. All of it. So then, what shall we do with this, “What do they think of me?” It.does.not.matter. What matters is what God thinks of me.

I find all of this gloriously liberating! Years ago I was asked to speak to a Rotary Lunch group. I told an older Christian man that I was definitely nervous about it. His response was, “That’s because you’re worried about what they’ll think of you. You need to put all of that out of your mind and focus completely on what you give to them. Give them the best presentation you know how and leave it up to God what they think of you when it’s over.” I took his advice and really did enjoy the speaking. I hope they did too, but then, that doesn’t matter! For several years after that, every time I was asked to speak, I would have to invest some serious prayer in asking the Lord to help me forget myself and just give the people the best message I could. Somewhere along the way, I actually completely lost any fear at all for public speaking, and, to this day, can honestly say I enjoy it.

Now, when I walk into that room full of people and I’m tempted to worry “What do they think of me?” I can instead just say, “Lord, help me to love these people. Help me to be interested in them. Help me to forget myself and just be what You want me to be.” And time and time again, He does just that. He does help me. I can walk away later and actually be glad for the conversations I had, and that not because I think I did a good job, but rather because the Lord helped me. Once again, though, what would enable you and me to live above ourselves is knowing that, no matter what, God loves me and He’s for me. There is no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus!

May you and I every day learn to more and more concern ourselves with what God thinks of us, not anyone else. In II Cor. 5:15, it says Jesus “died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for Him who died for them and rose again.” May the assurance of His love free us to be people of love!