This week I came across a video that tells the story of present-day Chinese Christians. One after another gave testimony to the grace of God at work in their lives. Their joy and confidence in Christ spurred me to glory in the Lord for His mercy. Watching their passionate worship in crowded buildings and rooms, with standing room only, reminded me of the effectiveness of the gospel among people that do not presume upon the Christian faith. But the thing that stood out was how they knew this joy and confidence in the midst of great persecution. All of them knew firsthand something of persecution. They knew the experience of hiding to worship or alternating schedules in order to avoid discovery by authorities. Their church buildings had been destroyed. Ministers told of being arrested and imprisoned five, eight, and even eleven times. Their captors mercilessly beat them. Deprived of families and church, they persevered until their release, and returned to faithfully serving Christ once again.
Though deprived of things dear to them, these brethren understood one thing their captors could not take away from them. Even with the severest beatings and harshest treatment, brutality cannot rob a Christian of Christ’s love. Nothing can separate us from His love; nothing can conquer His love rooted in the believer.
What does the knowledge of Christ’s enduring love do for the Christian? It motivates him to persevere in the faith. He finds encouragement to obey even in the difficult times, to serve others in the name of Jesus Christ, and to remain faithful in the face of opposition. Christ’s love is that strong and important; it is that intense and personal!
Nothing can separate the believer from Jesus Christ’s love. Yet one of the problems that we face is presuming upon His love. We’ve grown up with “Jesus loves you” bumper stickers, buttons, and post-it-notes. Unfortunately, that cheapens the meaning of His love and how special it is to be on the receiving end of redeeming love. So we must rethink what it means to know Christ’s inseparable love and how that affects us in daily life. Probably the best way to do so is to try to get our minds back into the context of the church at Rome. Then we can see the steady assurance that belongs to us through this infinite love of our Lord. Do you live in the reality of Christ’s love?
Do you ever think of something arising of such magnitude that it will sever you from the love of Christ? That’s what Paul deals with. Keep in mind that he continues to work through the subject of Christian assurance of salvation. Each facet of assurance serves to encourage the believer to persevere in the faith. The certainty that we are preserved or kept by the power of God (1 Pet. 1:5) does not breed laziness but urges the believer to continue on in the disciplines of the Christian life. Our greatest motivation for steadfastness and endurance rests in the certainty of what God in Christ has done and continues to do in His people.
In spite of this certainty, sometime we struggle over assurance. We see the fickleness of human love and fear that God’s love exists on the same level. At times the focus of that struggle relates to our grasp of God’s love. Can He really love me if I am going through this ordeal or that trial or this hardship or that loss? Is there a sort of quid pro quo—“something for something” equivalency when it comes to the believer’s faith and certain tangible evidences of God’s love? That is, if I have faith in Him then is He not obligated to provide certain tangible benefits, favors, and exceptions to the vexations of humanity for me? When that kind of Western mentality creeps into our understanding of Christianity, we will certainly struggle over whether or not God’s love can triumph over life’s difficulties.
Admittedly, sometimes it is not Westernization of Christianity that poses the problem. Rather sometimes life comes at us with such opposition and fierce adversity that we begin to cry out, even as Jesus did at the cross, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” Biblical writers, as we shall see in working through this passage, did not hesitate to show the depth of human emotions in the struggle to persevere in faithfulness. We see this first in the puzzling question of verse 34.
“Who will separate us from the love of Christ?” After considering legal questions in verses 33-34 that considered both inward and external reasons against assurance for God’s elect, Paul now moves to the realm of the relational. He sounds the depths of a redeemed life in a fallen world and how that life meets with outward hardship as a Christian. Can any of these outward issues separate the Christian from Christ’s love?
Let’s think about Paul’s original recipients. Roman believers, with the exception of those from Jewish background, came out of idolatry and paganism. A loving deity was foreign to them. Their gods notably deceived and tricked devotees in order to accomplish their own selfish purposes. While in their idolatry, these new believers never knew security, love, compassion, or favor from their capricious gods.
Most of them likely engaged in emperor worship. At designated shrines or temples, they brought their incense and offerings to burn before Caesar’s image. As loyal worshipers they made the confession, “Caesar is lord.” Did they know love and affection from Caesar? Did he listen to their cries or sympathize with them in their needs?
Others, in typical polytheistic practice, bowed before a variety of gods and engaged in multiple pagan liturgies. In Rome they might have frequented the Temple of Saturn, the god-king of Italy; or Cybele, the deity of a fertility cult; or the Temple of Castor and Pollux, the mythical boy-founders of Rome. These only sample the many deities, each with particular rituals and liturgies, often accompanied with immoral practices. Did they know favor and affection from the stone cold gods whom they worshiped, prayed before, and engaged in ritual immorality?
Then came the gospel of Jesus Christ! Witnesses traveled from Jerusalem after Pentecost and as did converts from other cities, migrating to the heart of the Empire. As salt and light, they were notably different than their Roman counterparts (Matt. 5:13-16). They were ready to given an answer for the hope within them (1 Pet. 3:15). One here, two there, another and another heard the gospel, repented of their idolatrous ways and believed in the Lord Jesus Christ as their Savior and followed Him as their Lord. For the first time in their lives they understood and grasped the love of God for them. They felt the affection of Him who was crucified for them.
Soon the glaring realities of a fallen world rushed upon them. Unbelieving family and friends squeezed them to compromise, to deny and reject Christ. Members of the trade guilds pressured them to offer sacrifices to their patron deities. Government officials persecuted them for their loyalty to Christ, which they considered disloyalty to Caesar. Some lost jobs and faced hunger and deprivation. Others were threatened with harm or even death if they continued as disciples.
So these believers wrestled. Could the mounting opposition separate them from the love of Christ? Would His love buckle under the strain they faced? Did the adverse situations mean that they were no longer living under the favor and affection of Jesus Christ?
Paul calls for a representative list of adversities, personifying them with the relative pronoun “who.” “Who can separate us from the love of Christ?” Can these opponents effectively severe the bond of Christ’s love? Can you add to the list? Are there issues that seem to threaten your consciousness of Jesus Christ’s love?
Why does Paul bring up the issue of “the love of Christ”? If we think of this section of Romans 8 as a long, slow climb to the peak of the mountain of assurance, this is the peak. Love that will not let us go, love that brings us from the depths of darkness into the glory of holy light, love that no longer condemns but counts us just and righteous in God’s sight, love that pursues enemies to adopt them into the divine family, love that removes the guilt of sin and replaces it with the joy of forgiveness: it is this kind of love of which the Apostle had in mind. We see this especially in verse 37. “But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us.” This “love of Christ” points to the cross. See the Son of God standing in your place, bearing divine wrath in your stead! See Him there, abandoned by the Father, as He became sin for us so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him! See Him separated from the Father by the curse of sin—our sin—that He shouldered! His love sent Him to the cross; His love kept Him on the cross until He cried, “It is finished!” His love accompanied Him as He rose from the grave and ascended to the Father’s right hand to continue interceding for us.
Just this knowledge, this intense, experiential knowledge of Christ’s love, is precisely what Paul prayed that the Ephesian believers might know.
For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; and that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God (Eph. 3:14-19).
There is no fickleness in His love. It does not shift with the changing seasons of life or alter with the trials that you encounter. It is a distinguishing love. It sets us apart from the rest of the world in that He affirms His love for us by electing us, calling us, justifying us, and glorifying us. We see the cross and know that there is no other love to compare with what the perfect Son of God did for unworthy sinners, clarifying the immeasurable depths of His love. Here is love in action, love pursuing us even though we were enemies (Rom. 5:8). It is a love that abounds in grace toward all that believe (5:15-17). Calvin hit the mark well in explaining the constant power of Christ’s love for us:
For he does not simply say that there is nothing which can tear God away from his love to us; but he means, that the knowledge and lively sense of the love which he testifies to us is so vigorous in our hearts, that it always shines in the darkness of afflictions; for as clouds, though they obscure the clear brightness of the sun, do not yet wholly deprive us of its light; so God, in adversities, sends forth through the darkness the rays of his favour, lest temptations should overwhelm us with despair; nay, our faith, supported by God’s promises as by wings makes its way upward to heaven through all the intervening obstacles [Calvin’s Commentaries, vol. XIX, 326].
He could have listed hundreds of opponents to the redeemed but Paul identifies seven, recounting his own journey in the faith as he does (2 Cor. 6:4-5; 11:21-29). Apart from the sword, which he later faced, Paul had already experienced each of these opponents of the faith. Throughout all he found Christ’s love unwavering! “Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?”
The first, “tribulation,” means “pressing” or “pressure.” It came from the language of vineyards to refer to “the treading of grapes, the pressure that bursts.” Tribulation runs the gamut to express that which puts pressure against living faithfully as a Christian “Distress” or “hardship” means to be in narrow straits, whether physically, mentally, or emotionally. “Persecution” means that you are hunted down for harm, a common experience of many early Christians as well as millions in our own day. “Famine” and “nakedness” could be due to adverse agricultural and economic issues in that era or due to the persecution that left believers destitute [Leon Morris, The Epistle to the Romans, 339]. As Stott points out, the Sermon on the Mount promises that the Father knows our need for food and clothing, so destitution in these may cause believers to question God’s fatherly care [Romans: God’s Good News for the World, 257]. “Peril” could refer to any sort of danger. Leon Morris remarked, “it was not a comfortable world in which to profess the faith” [Morris, 339]. “Sword” implies the ultimate opposition: martyrdom for the faith.
We might call these seven examples of life’s extremes, evidences of living in a fallen world as a Christian. Paul asks whether any of them can separate us from Christ’s love. As with the questions in verses 31, 33-34, this one expects a negative answer as well. None of these opponents to faithfulness and perseverance diminish, alter, change, snuff out, or break off Christ’s love. So what are we to do with this list? Find your own challenges to perseverance in this list. The moment that you think that the Lord has cast you out into a wide ocean of suffering without His care, and without the help and grace that accompanies His love, then stop; see the certainty that the Apostle sets forth. Nothing can separate us from the love of Jesus Christ! Rely upon the constancy of His love!
New Testament authors did not write in a 1st century vacuum. They wrote with Old Testament stories and texts in mind. Often the texts are quoted yet even more so, they find their way into their conversations as background, giving added authority to their message. “Just as it is written, ‘For Your sake we are being put to death all day long; we were considered as sheep to be slaughtered.”
Such is the case in Paul’s letter. Here he quotes Psalm 44 as evidence that the suffering and trials of this present faith in Christ were nothing new. Believers in previous centuries before the fuller revelation in Christ faced the same issues. “The words in the original psalm express the perplexity of the people of God in the face of inexplicable suffering” [Morris 339]. The Psalm likely came out of the trials during the post-exilic period, that timeframe of Ezra and Nehemiah, and prophets Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi. It begins with a historical reflection, a meditation on God’s deliverance and planting of Israel in earlier centuries (44:1-3) This follows with a confession of God as King, and confidence that their deliverance would not be by bow and sword but the Lord (44:4-8). Yet their anguish is seen in the next stanza—the longest of the psalm’s five stanzas. Though they had continued on in faithfulness to the Lord they felt rejected by Him, as though He had given them over to their enemies as sheep to be eaten. Dishonor and humility overwhelmed them due to those reproaching them (44:9-16). Then they plead their case! They had not turned their back on the Lord or turned from following Him yet it seemed as though He had given them over to their enemies (44:17-19). As happens so often in Hebrew poetry, the answer to their dilemma came in the last stanza (44:20-26). There they understood something of the reason for their plight: “But for Your sake we are killed all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered” (44:22). The reason for their suffering was precisely because of their union with the Lord. God was not removed from them in spite of their circumstances. He had not abandoned them, thus they had grounds to cry out to Him for help. “Rise up, be our help, and redeem us for the sake of Your lovingkindness” (44:26). That last word is precisely what Paul had in mind when teaching us assurance through Christ’s love. “Lovingkindness” refers to God’s covenant mercy or His loyal love for those whom He redeemed. He does not abandon the objects of His redeeming love!
Though devotion to Jesus Christ is risky in this world, it is the lone sphere of relationship to God. Throughout history, God’s people continue to be “aliens and strangers” in this world. Count on the world to act like the world when it comes to treatment of Christians. Do not think the world to be on friendly terms with the Lord God. But do know that when opposition mounts, the love that sent Jesus to the cross and kept Him there until the bitter end, triumphs on your behalf so that you might endure, even as Jesus did, “so that you will not grow weary and lose heart” (Heb. 12:1-3).
Paul takes us to a new level of thinking and living as we ponder the love of Christ. He does not call for us to hide in a cave and wait for God to deliver us but rather to go on living as Christians facing worldly opposition, strengthened to endure through Christ’s love. “For Your sake we are being put to death all day long.” There is purpose to it. Romans 8:28 works concurrently with the opposition: God works even the opposition and adversities for good. One Christian living under the persecutions of Charles II in Britain, wrote to his congregation from his prison cell in Northampton: “The cup of afflictions for the gospel is the sweeter the deeper…a stronger cordial the nearer the bottom.” In other words, the worse it gets the sweeter the gospel becomes; the deeper you go on in adversities, the more you know of the love of Christ [quoted by Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Romans: Chapter 8:17-39, 447].
C.K. Barrett expressed it like this. “Suffering and persecution are not mere evils which Christians must expect and endure as best they can; they are the scene of the overwhelming victory which Christians are winning through Christ” [quoted by L. Morris, 339]. Paul calls for us to feel the wonder of Christ’s love for us when we come face to face with the world’s opposition or life’s suffering. Though we live in the “now” of persecution, affliction, and trials, as the recipients of Christ’s love, we are not far from the eternal realm of the “not yet.” Glory awaits us; Christ’s love in every situation is a foretaste of it. Loyalty to Jesus Christ might bring suffering but suffering is accompanied with conquering love through Christ.
The contrasting conjunction, “But,” at the beginning of verse 37, shows its connection to Paul’s argument in verses 33-36. Whether the legal questions of vv. 33-34 or the relational opposition in vv. 35-36, “But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us.” We might expect that the legal attacks on why we deserve condemnation or the relational assaults aimed at separating us from Christ might prevail. But no! “In all these things,” no exceptions, no caveats, no wiggle room, no defeat—“in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer.” The verb is difficult to translate. “More than conquerors” is the way the Genevan and Authorized versions translated it. Tyndale translated it as “we overcome strongly,” while the literal rendering is “supervictor” [ELKGNT]. Paul used a superlative so that we would not miss the point. The love of Jesus Christ poured out in His substitutionary death for us does not lag when we encounter the worst that this world or the devil can throw our way. We triumph in Jesus Christ. His love causes us to conquer the adversities and opposition to our faith by preserving us through each ordeal.
Paul uses an aorist tense to describe Christ’s love: “through Him who loved us.” The past tense does not diminish the continuing nature of His love but simply points to the ultimate act and triumph of His love at the cross. That is intentional; he leaves us thinking of the cross-centered approach to every detail of life. It is in light of the triumph of Jesus Christ on our behalf that we triumph over attacks of legalists condemning us, Satan accusing us, and persecution pursuing us. Waves of love flow from the cross of Christ to us, washing us in His victory, symphonizing with the adversities against us to turn them into good on our behalf.
How does this work out in daily life? Does this mean that we are numb to adversities? I think not but rather, the love of Jesus at the cross (1) makes sense of our suffering as believers (“for Your sake”), (2) changes our attitude to one that finds the gospel sweetening the trials (“who will separate us from the love of Christ?”), and (3) enables us to triumph by persevering under even severe trials, showing the power of the gospel of Jesus Christ for us and in us (“overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us”). Meditate on this love of Christ for His own. Live in it. Find refuge in His love when trials and adversities oppose you. “But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us.”
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