Nothing Can Separate Us

(Image: Return of the Prodigal Son, by Bartolomé Esteban Murillo)

There are promises in Scripture that we believe easily when life is going well.

Then there are promises we discover were written precisely for the hour when everything is not.

Near the end of Romans 8, St. Paul gives us one of the great declarations of the Christian faith:

“For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come,
nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
—Romans 8:38–39

We often read those words as encouragement.

They certainly are.

But Paul is saying something considerably stronger than, God will keep loving you when things are difficult.

He is making an absolute claim.

There is nothing in creation capable of severing the Christian from the love of God in Christ.

And Paul spends the entire chapter getting us there.

Romans 8 does not begin with our feelings about God.

It begins with God’s judgment concerning us:

“There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus.”
—Romans 8:1

That word condemnation matters.

Paul is not saying that Christians will never feel guilty. Sometimes we should feel guilty. When we sin, the proper response is not to convince ourselves that what we did does not matter. We confess our sins. We repent. We make restitution where restitution is possible.

Nor is Paul promising that Christians will never experience shame, sorrow, anxiety, fear, or the consequences of their actions.

He says something much more objective.

There is no condemnation.

The Judge has rendered His verdict.

The sinner who is in Christ is justified—not because the sin was insignificant, but because Christ has borne it.

That is where Romans 8 begins.

And everything that follows rests upon it.

Paul then moves from the courtroom into the household.

The one who has been justified is not merely released from punishment and sent on his way.

He is brought home.

“For you did not receive the spirit of bondage again to fear, but you received the Spirit of adoption by whom we cry out, ‘Abba, Father.’”
—Romans 8:15

Christian salvation is more than acquittal.

Imagine a guilty man standing before a judge. The judge declares that his debt has been satisfied and that he is free to go.

That would be mercy enough.

But then imagine the judge stepping down from the bench, walking toward the man, and saying:

“Now come home with Me. You are My son.”

That is something greater still.

The Gospel does not merely tell us what God has taken away.

It tells us what God has given us.

Condemnation is gone.

Adoption has come.

The condemned has become a child.

And Paul goes farther:

“and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ.”

We have not merely escaped something.

We have inherited something.

And this is where Christianity refuses to become sentimental.

If Romans 8 ended with adoption, we might imagine that belonging to God means that suffering should disappear.

Paul immediately tells us otherwise.

We are heirs with Christ:

“if indeed we suffer with Him, that we may also be glorified together.”

The Christian still suffers.

Creation itself groans.

We groan.

We wait.

We hope.

Sometimes we do not even know how to pray.

Paul knows nothing of the Christianity which says that if we have sufficient faith, everything will work out pleasantly.

Instead he says:

“Likewise the Spirit also helps in our weaknesses. For we do not know what we should pray for as we ought.”

There are moments when the Christian cannot find the words.

There are moments when all we have is a groan.

And even there, God has not abandoned us.

The Spirit intercedes.

Then comes another famous promise:

“And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose.”
—Romans 8:28

This verse is sometimes made to say something it does not say.

Paul does not say that all things are good.

Cancer is not good.

Death is not good.

Betrayal is not good.

Sin is not good.

Grief is not good.

Some things are genuinely evil.

The promise is not that evil secretly becomes good if we look at it from the proper angle.

The promise is that evil cannot frustrate the purposes of God.

God is so sovereign that even those things which oppose His good purpose cannot finally defeat it.

And Paul tells us what that “good” actually is in the very next verse:

“For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son.”

There is the good.

Christ.

God is making us like His Son.

Sometimes He does it through joy.

Sometimes through suffering.

Sometimes through abundance.

Sometimes through loss.

But nothing that enters the life of the Christian is powerful enough to make God abandon His purpose.

Then Paul begins asking questions.

“If God is for us, who can be against us?”

The obvious answer is: plenty of people.

People can oppose us.

Governments can oppose us.

Friends can betray us.

Families can abandon us.

The world can hate us.

The devil can accuse us.

Our own consciences can torment us.

So Paul is not saying that nobody will ever stand against the Christian.

He means:

Who can successfully stand against the purpose of God for us?

And the answer is:

No one.

Then Paul asks:

“Who shall bring a charge against God’s elect?”

Again, charges may certainly be brought.

Some of them may even be true.

The devil does not always have to lie when he accuses us.

Sometimes the most painful accusation is the one to which we must answer:

Yes. I did it.

But Paul continues:

“It is God who justifies.”

That changes everything.

The question is not whether an accusation can be made.

The question is whether the accusation can overturn God’s verdict.

It cannot.

“Who is he who condemns?”

Christ died.

Christ rose.

Christ sits at the right hand of God.

Christ intercedes for us.

The entire machinery of salvation stands behind Paul’s declaration.

Only then does Paul ask the great question:

“Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?”

And he begins naming possibilities.

Tribulation?

No.

Distress?

No.

Persecution?

No.

Famine?

No.

Nakedness?

No.

Peril?

No.

Sword?

No.

Notice what Paul does not say.

He does not say Christians will never encounter these things.

He says these things cannot separate us from Christ.

There is an enormous difference.

Christianity does not promise immunity from suffering.

It promises that suffering cannot have the final word.

Indeed, Paul quotes the Psalms:

“For Your sake we are killed all day long;
We are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.”

Then he says:

“Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us.”

Not apart from these things.

In these things.

The victory of Christ does not always consist in removing the cross.

Sometimes it consists in carrying us through it.

Then Paul seems almost to look around creation for anything he might have forgotten.

Death?

No.

Life?

No.

Angels?

No.

Principalities?

No.

Powers?

No.

The present?

No.

The future?

No.

Height?

No.

Depth?

No.

Then, as though someone might object that he has forgotten something, Paul closes the door completely:

“nor any other created thing.”

That covers everything.

Anything that might threaten to separate you from Christ belongs to one of two categories:

God—or something God created.

And God is the One holding you.

Everything else falls under Paul’s words:

“any other created thing.”

There is nowhere else for the threat to come from.

And perhaps this is where the promise becomes hardest to believe.

We can believe that persecution cannot separate us from Christ.

We can believe that demons cannot separate us from Christ.

We can believe that death cannot separate us from Christ.

But what about us?

What about our weakness?

Our failures?

The sin we thought we had conquered but committed again?

The words we desperately wish we could take back?

The years we wasted?

The things we knew better than to do—and did anyway?

Are you a created thing?

Then Paul has already included you.

This does not make repentance unnecessary.

It makes repentance possible.

The prodigal can arise and go to his father precisely because the one waiting at the end of the road is still his father.

We do not repent in order to persuade God to love us again.

We repent because in Christ we are returning to the God who has already loved us.

Paul does not conclude by saying:

I hope this is true.

He says:

“For I am persuaded.”

He has become convinced.

Death cannot do it.

Life cannot do it.

Heaven cannot do it.

Hell cannot do it.

The present cannot do it.

The future cannot do it.

No power in creation can do it.

Not suffering.

Not persecution.

Not accusation.

Not fear.

Not failure.

Not even the grave.

Nothing can separate those who are in Christ from the love of God because that love does not rest upon our ability to hold tightly enough to Him.

It rests upon Christ.

Romans 8 begins:

“There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus.”

And it ends:

nothing “shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Notice what stands at both ends.

Christ Jesus.

That is the security of the Christian.

Not that I have loved Him perfectly.

Not that I have followed Him without stumbling.

Not that my faith has never wavered.

Not that I have never sinned after promising Him that I would not.

My assurance is this:

I am in Christ.

And if I am in Christ, there is no condemnation.

If I am in Christ, I have received the Spirit of adoption.

If I am in Christ, I am an heir.

If I am in Christ, even suffering cannot destroy God’s purpose for me.

If I am in Christ, accusation cannot overturn God’s verdict.

If I am in Christ, death itself cannot sever the bond.

For I am persuaded

“that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come,
nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Nothing.

Not one thing.

Nothing can separate us.