“Who can separate us from the love of Christ? Can affliction or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? As it is written: ‘Because of you we are being put to death all day long; we are counted as sheep to be slaughtered.’ No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Insecurity is a terrible weight to bear. The feeling that we are not enough on our own can be a debilitating one. The person carrying that load begins to search for anything that will assure them otherwise. When they find something that seems to fit the bill, they’ll do just about anything to keep that feeling coming. The God who reveals Himself in the pages of the Scriptures is perfect in every way. He is unapproachable in holiness. He is unequaled in righteousness. It’s easy for us to convince ourselves we aren’t good enough for Him; that we will never merit His love. The Gospel says otherwise. Let’s talk about it.

One of the hardest parts of the Gospel is coming to grips with God’s perfect holiness and our utter sinfulness. It’s hard intellectually because we don’t like to think of ourselves as sinful. We much prefer to think of ourselves as basically good. That’s certainly a more comforting thought. It’s nonsense, but it is more comforting to be sure.

It’s hard theologically as well. Nearly all of the gods we have made up for ourselves have been little more than super-powered versions of ourselves. They may have had god-like powers, but they reflected all the same insecurities and moral failings that we deal with in our own lives. The God revealed in the pages of the Scriptures, though, is different. The claims about Him in the Scriptures are different. They are bigger and grander and more comprehensive. The Scriptures are abundantly clear that He is utterly perfect in every way. This is the case in spite of intentionally dishonest or otherwise ignorant attempts to willfully distort the picture of His character on the basis of a handful of difficult stories.

It’s also hard relationally. Once we actually start to get our hearts and minds wrapped around God’s greatness and our lowliness, the question that naturally bubbles to the surface is how He can stand to have anything to do with us. How could He possibly care for us? Does He really love us? These aren’t easy questions to field. A good argument could be made that our efforts, whether willful or ignorant, to declare our independence from Him or otherwise reduce His down to something more our size are attempts to avoid the heavy weight of questions like these. Indeed, if He isn’t that great and we don’t really need Him, then His love and care aren’t really considerations we have to bear.

Yet into these kinds of questions the Scriptures speak with abundant clarity. We are assured over and over that God is for us. We are guaranteed that God loves us. He is committed to us. He pulls out all the stops for us. His love for us is so great that He was willing to lay down His life for us in the person of Jesus so that He can have a relationship with us.

Surely this kind of love must be conditional and temperamental, right? If He is so holy and we are so sinful, then surely the slightest thing is all it takes to sever the connection between us. There must be a whole slate of things that can separate us from this amazing love and easily so. If the Gospel, the good news of God’s great love for us is what Paul has been describing it as throughout this chapter, how can we keep it once we have it?

The truth, as it turns out, is that once we have placed ourselves firmly in the love of God through our faith in Jesus, once the Spirit has taken up residence in our lives to guide and grow us in His character, there isn’t anything that can knock us from that perch. This is what Paul powerfully addresses in the final section of chapter 8 here.

“Who can separate us from the love of Christ?” That’s the question. Can anyone come after us and put themselves between us and God somehow? “Can affliction or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?” Are there circumstances that can accomplish this terrible feat? “As it is written: ‘Because of you we are being put to death all day long; we are counted as sheep to be slaughtered.'” Can God’s own frustration with us and the discipline that comes out of that frustration do the trick? Surely if God Himself is upset with us, then His love for us will end.

Yet God’s love for us in Christ is so great that none of those things come even close to managing to create any daylight between us and His love. “No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.” It’s not just that we slide in just under the radar here. Never are we somehow balanced on the blade of a knife as we consider God’s love for us and whether it will last. There was never any danger in the first place. We don’t just overcome all of these supposed threats to God’s love, we utterly dominate them. His love for us in Christ is so great that there is nothing that poses even the slightest threat to our position.

“For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Got that? There’s nothing that can accomplish this particular trick. Not a single thing. It doesn’t matter what it is. If there is a thing, that thing is not capable of separating us from the love of God in Christ.

Death can’t do it. Jesus defeated death. Nothing in life even comes close. No heavenly or earthly power makes His love waver even a little bit. Nothing happening right now does it. Nothing that may happen in the future can either. If you go up to the highest height or the lowest depth, you will still be secure in God’s love. And just in case it isn’t clear, no other created thing is capable of threatening God’s love for you. After all, God created all the created things. They are definitionally not capable of impacting His love for us.

If you are in God’s love, you are secure in that love. Period. End of story. The only real question that matters here, then, is this one: Are you in God’s love? His love for you in Christ exists whether you are in it or not. That’s already been established and proven beyond any reasonable or rational doubt. There are plenty of unreasonable and irrational doubts about it out there, but they are just that so we don’t have to worry about those. But whether or not you have received Jesus’ invitation into eternal life and a right relationship with God to put yourself within the secure boundaries of that love, that’s the thing that really matters.

We’ll explore together in a few more weeks how exactly that happens, but I’ll give you a sneak peak now: you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, and you believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead. That’s it. Do that, and you will be in God’s love in Christ. You will be saved. There’s not a good reason you haven’t embraced His love and the salvation it brings with it. Secure yourself in His love and live the life that is truly life. You’ll only ever be glad that you did.