Romans 8:35-39 “Living in the Sunshine”

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.

I guess I’ve come to the end (for now) of my study of Romans chapter 8. As is usually the case, I’m loathe to leave. What a bombshell of encouragement is every line of this glorious chapter! I’m still floored to know that this entire presentation of the Gospel clear from chapter 1 on through chapter 8 concludes with what? “Nothing shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Just think about it – all of that teaching about the Fall and the wrath of God and all of the discussion about Law and Grace and even chapter 7 and the “O wretched man that I am!” and all of that ends where? With you and me snuggled in the big strong arms of our wonderful loving Father whispering in our ear, “You’re mine forever!”

The one thing we need in this badly broken world – the assurance of His love – is exactly what the entire Gospel gives us, if we’ll only train our ears to listen to Him and not the other thousand voices that scream in our ears. He’ll go on later in the book of Romans to say, “For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through endurance and the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope … May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in Him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit” (15:4,13). Through all the smoke and noise and heartache of this world, the sun of God’s love would shine into our hearts, encourage us, give us hope, help us endure, and fill us with the same love Jesus lived even from the very Cross itself! “Today, you shall be with Me in Paradise!”

God give us the eyes to see You in it all, to trust You above it all, to live our lives literally from the lap of Your love.

I’m reminded once again of the words the Lord gave me as a young man as I was riding on a plane. As we ascended higher and higher, we passed through the clouds, then suddenly were literally above them. Though the clouds were thick, there was the sun shining brightly and beautifully. It had never occurred to me living my life under the clouds that the sun is always shining above the clouds. And so I quickly scribbled down the words:

“The sun is always shining, when you fly above the clouds,

Like the way my life is beautiful whenever You’re around.

You soothe my soul like summer rain;

You make the world seem right;

You lift me up above the clouds and drive away the night!”

When I wrote those words, they were just a silly love song. Today, I capitalized the “You,” realizing now it was Him all along!

The sun really is always shining, “when you fly above the clouds.” May my soul learn more and more to live above the clouds of this world’s troubles and ever enjoy the sunshine of His love. It’s there. Soul, go there and stay forever!

Romans 8:35-39 “Sheep for the Slaughter”

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.

I’ve always struggled just a bit to understand v.36, “As it is written, ‘For thy sake we are killed all the day long; We are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.’” This is a quote from Psalm 44:22, almost exactly taken from the Septuagint. To me, it seems strangely negative in the middle of all this conquering and victory. I vaguely understood that we as believers accept in this life whatever the Lord allows – and that sometimes that does include difficult times. However, it still just didn’t “fit” in the passage. It seems like it would be nicer if we just went from v.35 straight to v.37.

What I see now is that this verse is actually a victory in itself. This is a little deep, so I may not do a very good job of explaining what I see, but I want to try. It is generally true that, in this fallen world, we believers often conquer specifically by dying. How did Jesus win His great victory over death and hell? By dying, of course. Granted, He rose from the dead, but our redemption was won through His death. In Col 2:13-15 we learn, “When you were dead in your sins … God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, having canceled the charge of our legal indebtedness, which stood against us and condemned us; He has taken it away, nailing it to the Cross. And having disarmed the powers and authorities, He made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the Cross.” By the Cross. Jesus won by dying.

We’re reminded too of Tertullian’s quote, “The blood of martyrs is the seed of the church.” Those words were originally written in Latin and could be translated, “We multiply when you reap us. The blood of Christians is seed." His familiar point was that the church only multiplied the more the Roman government persecuted them. That early church literally conquered the world by dying. Jesus’ words were true to them then and remain true for us, “For it has been granted to you on behalf of Christ not only to believe on Him, but also to suffer for His sake” (Phil. 1:29).

I have always been inclined to believe that Paul’s conversion actually began the day they murdered Stephen. The entire reason they so hated Stephen was because “they could not stand up against his wisdom or the Spirit by whom he spoke” (Acts 6:10). The young, very intelligent Saul of Tarsus was there that day as Stephen admonished the entire Sanhedrin. For Saul and everyone else “they saw that his face was like the face of an angel” (v.15). Then, all the way through Acts chapter 7, Stephen did exactly what Paul would do later – he very logically and Biblically exhorted them with the truth.

That truth of course infuriated them and so they murdered the good and holy man Stephen. They thought by murdering him, they could silence the truth he’d spoken. However, chapter 8 begins with the words “And Saul was there, giving approval to his death.” The seemingly arbitrary insertion of that verse is what inclines me to believe that was the beginning of Saul’s conversion. It is true that his experience on the Damascus Road (chapter 9) would be dramatic, but Jesus converts no one against their will. I suspect that as Saul listened to Stephen’s admonition, he knew in his heart it was true, but his fallen, proud, Adamic heart wasn’t ready to bow, and so, he resorted instead to his murderous rage against believers.

Truth is, however, a stubborn thing. That day, listening to Stephen and watching him bravely (and humbly) die for his faith, young Saul of Tarsus suddenly had a crack in his armor. No doubt every day that he lived his murderous rage, that crack only widened as he watched one Christian after another suffer and die just like Stephen. Finally he was ready and that day Jesus met him and changed him from Saul of Tarsus to the Apostle Paul – the man who would carry the Gospel to the four corners of the civilized world and end up writing 2/3 of the New Testament!

My whole point in all of that is to illustrate how true were Tertullian’s words, “The blood of martyrs is the seed of the church.” Stephen’s death appeared that day to be nothing more than that – a man murdered because he dared to challenge the status quo. His murderers thought it was no more than that. Yet, if I’m right, and I think I am, that very death was instead the Lord’s tool to raise up the Apostle Paul and everything that would mean. Stephen probably didn’t know any of this at the time, yet it would be literally true that it was through his death that he conquered the world! His life (and death) certainly illustrated the truth of our verse, “For Thy sake we are killed all the day long, we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter,” yet we also see that he truly was “more than a conqueror!”

You and I probably have no idea what the Lord is accomplishing through our lives (and maybe deaths). I’ve said before, I don’t feel like I do much good at all. I’m certainly no Billy Graham or Mother Theresa. I’m guessing you feel the same. We’re trying. We want the Lord to use us. We pray He would. Yet, I rarely see that I have any influence at all. Stephen’s death would teach us all to leave our “influence” in God’s hands. Our job is to love God and love people the best way can, whatever that means on any given day, in any given situation, with the gifts (however seemingly few) God gives us. His job is to take our feeble efforts and actually touch people’s hearts. Naomi’s quiet love produced a Ruth – that produced a David! So then, “… none of us lives to himself alone and none of us dies to himself alone. If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord. So then, whether we live or die, we belong to the Lord” (Rom. 14:7,8).

All of this is why it is true that “we are more than conquerors.” The worst the world can throw at us is to kill us. However, because we are the Lord’s, He overrides their evil and instead uses even our death to touch this world for all eternity!

That then leads us back to the larger context of what we’re studying. What is our hope in suffering? And in Romans 8, when we say suffering, we’re not just talking about dying a martyr’s death. We’re talking about the everyday miseries of life in this cruel world. With all creation, our Bible itself says we’re “groaning.” What is our hope? That we are the Lord’s and He will use it all for His glory, even to the point of our death. Once again, you and I have no idea whose heart He is touching as we simply try to rise above our own miseries and go on loving the people around us.

In this world’s eyes, you and I may just be “sheep for the slaughter.” … but they don’t know who our Father is! Who but Him could ever take the curse of sin, even death itself, turn it around and use it for eternal good?

What a mighty God we serve!

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!