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Can anything separate a believer from the love of God, and what is Christ doing now?
Paul asks four questions in a row and answers them all the same way. The answer is not the believer's grip on Christ but Christ's ongoing work.
What Scripture says
Loading Romans 8:32…
The argument runs from the greater to the lesser. If God has already given the costliest thing, the smaller gifts are not in doubt.
Loading Romans 8:34…
Four things in one sentence, all present tense at the end: died, , seated, interceding. The last is what Christ is doing while the believer reads the verse.
Loading Hebrews 7:25…
The reason the reaches all the way: He does not stop interceding, because He does not stop living.
Paul's four questions
Who can be against us, verse 31. Who shall lay anything to our charge, verse 33. Who is he that condemns, verse 34. Who shall separate us, verse 35. Each is answered from what God has already done rather than from anything the believer contributes.
The answers are worth naming in order: God is for us; God ; Christ died, rose, reigns and intercedes; nothing in creation can separate us. Not one of the four answers looks at the Christian's own consistency.
The list is deliberately exhaustive
Death, life, angels, principalities, powers, things present, things to come, height, depth, nor any other creature. Paul reaches for the widest categories available and then adds a clause to catch anything he missed.
Read the list slowly and notice what is in it. Death is there, so dying does not separate. Things to come is there, so the future does not. Powers is there, so spiritual opposition does not. Paul has thought about what frightens people and answered it by name.
What Christ is doing now
Verse 34 is the pastoral centre of the passage. Christ is not only the one who died in the past. He is , seated at God's right hand, and making intercession, present and continuous. Hebrews 7:25 explains the consequence: He saves to the uttermost because He ever lives to intercede.
So the question can a believer lose this love is answered by asking whether Christ will stop interceding. Jesus Himself says of His sheep in John 10:28 that no man is able to pluck them out of His Father's hand, and Philippians 1:6 says He who began the good work will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ.
This is not a licence for indifference. The same chapter says those who are led by the Spirit are the sons of God, verse 14, and that by the Spirit believers put sin to death, verse 13. Assurance in Romans 8 belongs to people in whom the Spirit is working, and the working is His as much as the security is.
Where this points to Christ
Everything in this passage rests on the sentence that echoes Genesis 22. God spared not His own Son. Abraham was stopped at the knife and given a ram; there was no ram for Christ, because He was the . Because that has happened, verse 33 can ask who shall lay anything to our charge and find the courtroom empty. And because He is and interceding, verse 34, the security is not a past transaction only but a present ministry. The love nothing can separate believers from is love with a name: the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Scripture interpreting Scripture
- Genesis 22:12-13
The son spared and the substitute provided. The background to spared not his own Son.
- John 10:27-30
No one plucks the sheep out of the Father's hand. Christ's own statement of the same security.
- Hebrews 7:25
He ever lives to make intercession, therefore He saves to the uttermost.
- Philippians 1:6
He who began the work will finish it.
- 1 Peter 1:3-5
An inheritance reserved in heaven for those kept by the power of God.
What this changes
Read verses 35 to 39 aloud and let the list do its work. Whatever you are afraid will finally cut you off is either named there or covered by nor any other creature. Then look at verse 34 again and remember that at this moment Christ is interceding for you, which is a far steadier ground than how firmly you feel you are holding on.
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