What, then, shall we say in response to this? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all – how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. Who is he that condemns? Christ Jesus, who died – more than that, who was raised to life – is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? As it is written: “For your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.” No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Brothers and sisters, happy New Year! This is a time of year when we often take stock of where we have been in the past year and look at where we may be a year from now. It is always interesting to me how much can happen in just a year. If we live for 90 or more years, just one year doesn’t seem so big in the grand scheme of things. But think of what can happen in a year. A baby can be conceived and born. A teenager can graduate, move out of the house, and go to college. A couple can become engaged and get married. A couple can also retire, sell their house, and move to Florida in just one year. A couple could even start and finish a bicycle trip across the United States. Think of what has happened to you in 2006. Now think back to New Year’s Eve, December 31, 2005. How many of your life events did you predict would happen?
There is so much that we don’t know about what is going to happen in our lives. Look at the next year ahead of you - 2007. You might get a new job. You might lose an old friend. You might come into a large sum of money. You might get sick. Your congregation might call someone as a pastor. All of this is completely unknown to you right now.
In the midst of all of this uncertainty, these words from Romans 8 come to us this morning. These verses, verses 31 through 39, have something to say about our uncertainty. The apostle Paul, who wrote the book of Romans, tells us that there is something that is certain. The only thing that we can be certain about is that the love of God will always be with us. Nothing, Paul writes (and if you have your Bibles open you can turn to verse 39), nothing at all, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. He asks a whole series of rhetorical questions, ruling out everything that could possibly separate us from God’s love. Trouble, hardship, persecution, famine, nakedness, danger, sword, death, life, angels, demons, the present, the future, powers, height, depth, anything else in all creation: everything falls away in the light of this truth that is both amazingly simple and too great to understand: God is for us. You can never be separated from the fact that God is for you.
Now, you may say, there is something that can separate us from God’s love: sin! We’ve seen pictures that illustrate this separation in the tracts that Christians hand out. There’s a picture of us and God, standing on opposite sides of a canyon, a canyon that is formed by our sinfulness. We have been separated from God, and we’ve done it ourselves.
This is true, and we recognize this as Reformed Christians. Sin does separate us from God. But Paul, who wrote the book of Romans, tells us the end of the story here in Romans 8. That gap between us and God has been bridged, and there is nothing that can separate us from God’s love! In fact, the gap has been bridged by God’s love, showing itself in Jesus Christ.
Let’s look more closely at how Paul describes this bridging of the gap. The imagery and the language here are from a courtroom. Verse 33 says, “Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen?” To get a better handle on this, imagine something with me. Picture humanity, better yet, picture yourself as part of humanity, guilty of a crime and sitting at the defense table in a courtroom. You are nervous. You’re about to find out what your punishment will be for the crimes you have committed. However, you will not be accused and no sentence will be rendered, because this is not an ordinary courtroom. Three of the positions in an ordinary courtroom are filled by the same person. There’s no one at the prosecutor’s bench, because the prosecutor is the judge! No one is going to bring a charge against you. This is really not an ordinary courtroom, because the judge is actually your defense lawyer. You need not fear the prosecutor or the judge, because God is the only one who is able to fill both of those roles, and God is your defense lawyer. The judge wants you to win the case.
As with all analogies, there are limits to this analogy. Mostly, it’s just hard for us to picture a courtroom like this. But the point is that there is only one who is innocent and powerful enough to condemn us, and that one has chosen to justify us instead. Our sin cannot separate us from God’s love. No matter how bad we are, we are forgiven. Nothing will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
How does God do this? He did not spare his own son. Check out verse 32. When we think of God not sparing his own son at this time of year, we might think of the manger once again. Right now, we look to the Christmas story when we think of the coming of Christ, and appropriately so. But Paul’s readers would have thought of another Bible story – the story of Abraham being asked to sacrifice his son Isaac. Abraham was so obedient that he did what was unthinkable – when God asked him to sacrifice Isaac, he actually almost did it. Abraham did not spare even his own son. Now, in Romans 8, we find out that God has done the same kind of thing. God did not even spare his own son for us. If he did that for us, we can tell that this is the kind of God who will not let anything separate us from his love. Nothing will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
This inseparable love through Christ Jesus has been a hidden theme of the book of Romans all along. Let’s zoom out a bit here. We could divide Romans into three large sections. The first section is chapters 1 through 8, where Paul describes the most important parts of the Christian faith and the most unique parts of the Christian faith. It’s a sort of theological summary of everything that Paul believes, like a long version of the Apostle’s Creed. The second section is chapters 9 through 11, where Paul deals with one specific issue: the relationship of God’s promise to Israel to the new promise in Jesus. The third section is chapters 12 through 16, where Paul tells his readers how to act as Christians. This is where he gets specific and practical. Today we’re at the end of the first section. Paul has been talking about God’s love in Christ for eight chapters. The verses that we heard today are the grand finale of all of this talk about God’s love in Christ. I picture verses 31 through 39 as the end of an African American sermon. In this style of preaching, the sermon builds and builds in intensity until the very end. The preacher is speaking loudly and quickly by now, with great passion. The entire congregation is on their feet, waving their arms and shouting Amen! Paul seems to say, “Do you hear me? I’ve been telling you this whole time. There is nothing, absolutely nothing, that will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Each idea piles up on top of the last one, until we are overwhelmed by the greatness of this love.
The point of this passage is to comfort us. This comfort does not come from a generic spiritual force. We certainly can feel God’s presence all around us and within us, but this is a comfort that goes even deeper than that. This is a comfort that comes from a very specific God – the God who was the God of Abraham and the God who did not spare his own Son. This God is the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – and this God and none other is the one whose love will never leave us. Nothing will be able to separate us from the love – and not just the love that’s out there, but the love of God – and not just the love of any god, but the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. The love of this God will always be with us.
Sometimes, this unending love is hard for us to believe. We hear it, and it makes sense, but for some reason we keep thinking that something has to depend on us. Maybe you’ve recently made some New Year’s resolutions: you want to read the Bible more frequently, think more holy thoughts, be a better Christian. If New Year’s resolutions are helpful to you, I certainly do not want to discourage you from making them. But whether you make them or not, you need to know that keeping your resolutions is not of eternal importance. If you don’t keep them, you might disappoint yourself, but you will not be separated from God’s love. If you do keep them, God won’t leave you alone, no matter how strong you may be. God has resolved to love us, and no matter what we resolve or what we do, that love is unchanging.
We’ve talked about the unknown future, and about the certainty of God’s love. We’ve talked about our own sin, and about the fact that God’s love doesn’t depend on us – even when we falter, it never stops. But we haven’t talked about the thing in our lives that seems to be the most threatening when it comes to separating us from God’s love. That thing is suffering. When things go wrong in our lives, it can seem like God has abandoned us. It can seem like God doesn’t love us anymore. When an unborn baby is miscarried, where is God’s love? When we are lonely and depressed, where is God’s love? When our business fails and we can’t support our family, where is God’s love? When our bodies don’t work the way they used to, where is God’s love? In times like these, it seems like something has separated us from God’s love – otherwise God would be taking better care of us!
Many of the Psalms in the Bible are called lament Psalms because they are written in times of suffering. The writer cries out to God in pain, feeling like God is far away. Paul knew this, because he quotes from Psalm 44, which is one of these Psalms of lament. “For your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.” There’s not much comfort there.
Not only does Paul know how to quote the Old Testament on suffering, he also knew suffering itself in his own life! He was thrown into prison for preaching the gospel. The book of Romans is a letter, and the people who read this letter also knew suffering. These original readers of the book of Romans were probably living under the reign of Emperor Nero, who was infamous for persecuting and killing Christians. These people knew suffering. When they heard, “Nothing can separate us from the love of God” they might have scoffed at first. They could understand Psalm 44, but they couldn’t understand empty optimism.
Empty optimism is not what they got in Romans 8. When he wrote to these Christians, Paul didn’t ignore their suffering. When we read the book of Romans today, we don’t have to ignore the suffering in our world either. Pain is real, and we can’t just brush it away because we’re Christians. Listen to these questions in verse 35: “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?” It is not that this list of difficulties might happen to us, it is that they will happen to us. Paul is not trying to tell us that we can avoid suffering. He is trying to tell us that even when we do face suffering, even in the very midst of it, God still loves us. We may feel that God is far away, but God’s love is still present. It’s not always obvious, but it’s the truth of the gospel: nothing will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
We look with hope towards a future in which there will be no suffering, but until then, we cling to this comfort. Nothing will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. It’s only one comfort, but it’s the greatest comfort that we could ever know. Nothing will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. We’ve heard it before in the Heidelberg Catechism, but it’s worth hearing again: “What is your only comfort in life and in death? That I am not my own, but belong – body and soul, in life and in death – to my faithful Savior Jesus Christ.” Because we belong to him, we can know that nothing will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
I don’t know very much about what you will face in the year 2007. But I know a few things. I know that you will face things that you never could have predicted. I know that you will face sin – your own sin and the sin of this world and those around you. I know that you will face suffering, as much as we all pray that you will not. And in the midst of all of this, I know that you will face the inseparable love of God. Nothing, brothers and sisters, nothing will be able to separate you from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
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