Chapter # 8 Paragraph # 5 Study # 5
June 3, 2008
Lincolnton, N.C.
(409)
1769 Translation:
35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?
shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?
36 As it is written, For thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.
37 Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us.
1901 ASV Translation:
35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or anguish, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?
36 Even as it is written, For thy sake we are killed all the day long; We were accounted as sheep for the slaughter.
37 Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us.
- I. The Question of "Separation" From the Love of Christ.
- A. What would it mean to be "separated from the love of Christ"?
- 1. The word translated "separate" is a word that indicates the production of "distance" between objects/persons. When this is physical, the "distance" is geographical; when it is "soulish", the "distance" is "divorce" (a refusal to be "joined" in body, soul, and spirit); and when it is "spiritual", the "distance" is a definitive distinction of character (Hebrews 7:26).
- 2. The implication is that being separated from the love of Christ would, then, mean that its fruits were not permitted to apply to the "distant" one.
- 3. The most likely issue, then, is that "separation" would mean being re-subjected to the Justice of God. What Paul is asking is, "Who can bring us to the point of being subject to the wrath of God once again?"
- 4. The question, therefore, is not about whether someone can get us to move out of the sphere of "loving Christ" (this is easy enough to do) but, rather, whether someone can get Christ to stop loving us.
- B. All of the "categories" of potential "separators" have to do with how we are treated in this world.
- C. Interestingly, those who claim that we can be separated from the love of Christ do so, not on the basis of a frontal denial of the things Paul listed in this text, but on the basis of our own choices. They say, "Others cannot separate us from Christ, but we can separate ourselves." It has been said this way: "No man can pluck us out of the Father's hand, but we can jump out on our own."
- 1. This, however, belies Paul's central thesis at its very heart. On the face of it, it is ridiculous to even think that Paul was saying that those who produce tribulation, distress, persecution, etc. could separate us from the love of Christ. What kind of mind could even go there? Clearly Paul was attempting to say that those who do those kinds of things were doing them so that we would abandon Christ in order to escape their machinations. It is never true, in any sense, that "another" can separate me from any loyalty that I maintain. "I" am the only one who can distance myself from one thing/person or another. Thus, his claim is that no matter what our response is to another's actions, we cannot be separated from His love. To posit any other possibility makes Paul's words nonsense. The notion of the deniers is really this: that Christ can be separated from our love by tribulation, anguish, persecution, etc. and that this separation of Him from our love results in His separation of us from His love.
- a. The first part of this flawed thesis is, unhappily, too true: we often stop loving Him because of our difficult circumstances (and console ourselves in our blindness by saying silly things like, "If He really loved me, He would not let this/that happen to me ... that it has happened just means He doesn't love me").
- b. But, the second part of the thesis is absolutely not true. What if God did tie His love to ours so that because ours falters, He withdraws His? According to Paul in this epistle (Romans 5:8), God loved us "while we were yet sinners" and the objectors want us to think that now that we are His children, He withdraws His love because we, as foolish children, do not treat Him like we should? What a god! He loves His enemies and hates His children when they disappoint Him!
- 2. At the root of the argument that we can be separated from the Love of Christ is the foolish doctrine of man's abilities to overrule the plans of God. Everyone has to buy into the freedom of God to make plans and pursue them because they cannot argue otherwise. Even the most vocal opponent of God readily "blames" Him every time some undesirable event occurs. This only proves one thing: men recognize that God does as He pleases without asking man for his permission. So both in "blame" and "praise" men submit to the reality that God is the "free" one and men are subject to His freedom whether they like it or not. Even while they are arguing for their own "free will" they are doing so to attempt to blunt the freedom of God.
- a. It is beyond debate that those who are producing "tribulation, distress, persecution, hunger, nakedness, danger, and sword" for the saints are doing so to attempt to thwart His dominion as it is being expressed through the saints. Does it work? Sadly, it works too often. The saints are not known for their courage.
- b. But Paul's question is not about whether these evils can change the choices and courses of the saints; it is about whether these evils have any ability to change the choices and courses of the God of the saints.
- c. Where men want to impose the "fidelity" of men over the big picture, they make the love of Christ subject to themselves. But, when men wish to impose the "fidelity" of God over the big picture, they make the love of Christ subject to His own loyalty issues (where it always was in any case).
