No Separation

Well, I invite you to take your Bible and turn to Romans 8, if you would. It’s page 801 in the church Bibles. And I think what we’re going to do is just read together from verse 28 through to the end of the chapter in the church Bibles. I really feel as though it was a misstep on my part to suggest that we memorize this in the ESV. You say, “Well it’s a bit late for you to acknowledge that now,” but I think it’s better for me to acknowledge it now than never to acknowledge it―not because the ESV is bad in any way, but because I think many of you have found what I have found, and that is that while I’m constantly studying it in the NIV and then trying to memorize it in the ESV, it’s just been very, very difficult, at least for me. If you’ve been singular in your focus, then it’s been much easier to accomplish, as I know some of you have done, and we commend you for that.

But with all that said, I think it’d be nice for us to read just in unison from verse 28 to the end of the chapter, and reading, if you read with me, along in the NIV, or with one of the church Bibles if you don’t have an NIV with you at the moment. Then we can sound out the glorious truths of the closing section of Romans 8.

Verse 28:

“And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.

“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.”

Thanks be to God for his Word.

Father, we pray now that as we look to these closing verses before we come around your Table, that you will guard and guide our thinking and so stir our hearts by way of pure remembrance that we might be more in love with Jesus, with a deepened sense of our security in your abiding, eternal love, and better equipped with the knowledge of your grace to share this good news with those who ask a reason for the hope we have.[1] And this we pray in your Son’s name. Amen.

Well, by the time we reach verse 37, which is essentially where we arrive this morning, Paul’s rhetorical questions have come to an end, and he’s moving to a grand finale. And in doing so, he makes these two great declarations. He has affirmed the fact that nothing will separate us from the love of Christ. It’s important for us to recognize that it is “the love of Christ”―not our love for Christ but Christ’s love for us. It’s not as encouraging if it were about our love for him, which, frankly, can ebb and flow. But the love of Christ towards us and for his people is an unerring love, and it is without any variableness or shadow due to change.[2] And nothing separates us from the love of God for us.

And so, having identified these things which we said this morning would challenge our happiness and challenge our security―“trouble or hardship or persecution,” “famine,” “nakedness,” “danger,” “sword,” as it is written in the Old Testament, as we read from Psalm 44, the people of God have faced death all day long; they’ve been regarded as sheep to be slaughtered—he then says, triumphantly, “No! No, no. In all these things we are more than conquerors.” It’s as if he actually invents another Greek word. He uses a word which is a compound word. He’s not happy just to say we’re conquerors; he declares that we are “more than conquerors.” We are actually… The word he uses is the word that gives us our word hyper. We are hyperconquerors. We are hypernikomen. We are the hyperconquerors “through him who loved us.” And only this heightened word can do justice to describing the victory that is ours in and through the Lord Jesus Christ.

And it is important for us to realize that he’s not saying that it is because we are removed from these things or because we have been taken to a realm that is above and beyond all these things, but rather it is “in all these things,” reminding us again of the fact that suffering and the experiences that are identified in these characteristics are not to be regarded as strange or as alien to the believer in the Lord Jesus Christ. And at the risk of just repeating myself ad nauseum, I say to you again that part of the challenge that we face in our generation is in being able to articulate to our friends and neighbors an understanding of suffering and the place of suffering in the life of the believer. It is “in all these things” that we’re “more than conquerors.”

And I think more than once in Romans 8 I’ve had occasion to reflect upon the words of Andraé Crouch, who many years ago came to Glasgow and shook up all the very staid people in the city of Glasgow. Some of them, I think, were actually standing on their seats by the time his concert had ended in a large concert hall in Glasgow. It was a thing to be seen. But I think it was there for the first time that I sensed the reality of Crouch as he sang words that until that time I’d only heard on an LP that was playing on my record player at home. But in the immediacy of that event, and in being able to be close enough to see his eyes when he sang,

Through it all,
Through it all,
I’ve learned to trust in Jesus,
I’ve learned to trust in God.

Through it all,
I’ve learned to depend upon his Word.

And, of course, it is in that song that you have the lyrics

And if I never had a problem,
I’d never know that God could solve them,
I’d never know what faith in Christ would do.[3]

And it is this that Paul is making clear. We are “more than conquerors,” not because we’re very special people, not because we’re very powerful people, not because we’ve been able to look inside of ourselves and say, “You know, you really are quite a remarkably strong character after all.” No, the conquering nature that we enjoy is that which is provided for us “through him who loved us.” “Through him who loved us.”

He loved us, Paul has said in 5:8—“while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” And when Jesus died upon the cross, he triumphed over all of the principalities and over all of the powers. And he has loved us with an everlasting love. An everlasting love. And there is no other love that is an everlasting love. The love of a spouse can never be an everlasting love. The love of a parent for a child, for a friend, can never be everlasting. It will inevitably be marred or spoiled, curtailed, ended by death. But the love through which we conquer is the love of the Lord Jesus, who has loved us in this everlasting way.

So, he says we’re more than conquerors, and then in verse 38, “[And] I am convinced.” “I am convinced.” This is almost like Paul in the cockpit. Have you been reading about what happened with that Airbus, the two-story Airbus, the Qantas Airbus, that blew an engine out coming out of Singapore? And as the reports have emerged, it has become apparent what many of us have feared―namely, that the computerization of those Airbuses is such that if it all goes on the fritz, then suddenly pilots who’ve been trained to fly may actually be overwhelmed by the technology that they have never really been trained to deal with if it all goes to pot.

The love through which we conquer is the love of the Lord Jesus.

And so it is quite remarkable that that crew of five managed to sustain that monster aircraft in the air for all that time, managed to land it, with the computer being unable to give them any kind of accurate representation of how much runway they would require to put it on the ground in safety. And the five pilots, working in collusion and cohesion with one another, brought the aircraft safely to the ground. And they were the ones who in that context were responsible for coming on from the cockpit and speaking to the hundreds of people who were in their custody. And I have little doubt, although I have no record of it, that they did not come on and say, “Oh, things are looking dreadfully shaky from where we are sitting! The computer has gone to pot. There’s a one in a hundred chance that we may…” No! They wouldn’t do that! They wouldn’t tell lies either. But what a tremendous difference it makes to those sitting in the back when the voice comes on and says, “I am convinced. I am convinced. This is your pilot speaking, and we will do everything in our power to bring this safely to a landing.”

And in a far greater way, Paul, as the servant of God, encourages these believers in Rome―encourages them by the sound of his voice in print―as he says to them in the face of all of their struggles, experienced and anticipated, “I am convinced.” And this not on the strength of rhetoric; this not some attempt on his part to manipulate their minds or instill in them a false confidence or false courage. No! “I am convinced that neither death nor life, angels, demons, present, future, powers, height, depth, anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God.”

His tense is the perfect tense. In some translations it reads “I am persuaded,” which is a good translation. In other words, “I am sure. I am convinced. I am persuaded.” In other words, in the view of the process of his thought that he has outlined not just in chapter 8 but throughout the whole book so far, his mind has been persuaded by the truth of who God is. The revelation of all of God in Christ, in the work of Christ, is the basis of a convinced mind and heart. It is not an emotional surge. He is, if you like—to stay with this tenuous airline illustration—he is flying the instruments. He is flying the instruments. He is paying attention to all that is given to him, he is making deductions on the strength of that information, and on the basis of what he knows, he then is able to affirm these things.

’Tis what I know of thee, my Lord and God,
That fills my [heart with praise], my lips with song.[4]

“’Tis what I know of thee.” You see, it is knowledge which provides the basis for being able to say, “In all of this we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.” How has he loved us? Read the Gospels, and you see how he has loved us. He has loved us enough to come in the humility of Bethlehem.[5] He has loved us enough to identify with us in our sin in his baptism.[6] He has loved enough to stand outside the grave of Lazarus and weep.[7] He has loved enough to sit with the woman at the well and introduce her to water whereby she will never thirst again.[8] He has loved us enough to agonize in Gethsemane and ask for the Father to remove the cup from him.[9] He has loved us enough to endure unmitigated suffering in the cross, refusing even the anesthetic potion that was offered to him,[10] in order that he might enter into the depths of all of human suffering. And all of our knowledge of that provides the basis for being able to say, “I am convinced. I am persuaded.”

And the hymn writers have helped us, haven’t they?

I know not why God’s wondrous grace
To me has been made known,
Nor why, unworthy as I am,
He bought me for his own.

But I know whom I have believed,
And I am persuaded that he is able
To keep that which I’ve committed
Unto him against that day.[11]

In the same way, when we sing “It Is Well With My Soul,” I’ve told you already—and I think we may have changed it. We probably haven’t changed it; it’s certainly not changed in the books. But when Spafford wrote “It Is Well With My Soul,” he did not write, “You have taught me to say it is well with my soul”; he wrote, “You have taught me to know it is well with my soul.”[12] We need to know that it is well so that we might be able to affirm that it is well. Knowledge is strength in Christian living as well.

“I am convinced, persuaded, I know, I’m sure, that nothing can and nothing will separate us from God’s love.” What a wonderful, wonderful truth. Nothing will separate us from God’s love.

Look at where he starts. We can’t work our way through this in detail, you’ll be glad to know, perhaps, but we’ll just note them in passing: “For I am convinced that neither death nor life…” “Life,” with all the battles, all the benefits, all the triumphs, all the temptations—no matter what it throws at us, it’s not going to separate us from God’s love.

“Death” will not separate us from God’s love. This struck me very forcibly the other evening as I was reading a poem to my wife. I’m not sure that she was as excited about it as I was, but she was very, very gracious in the way she listened. And I had actually come to this poem by Auden not because I remembered it from school but because I was introduced to it in a novel that I had been reading at the time. And I found just a line from it; the novelist used a line, “Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,” and I said, “Oh, yes.” So then, thankfully, we all have Google—or whatever you want to have. I’m sorry; I know this is not an advertisement for Google. But thankfully, you can go… So all I did was I just googled, “Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,” and then this is what I got:

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He is Dead.
Put crêpe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.[13]

That’s a classic expression of the separating nature of death. We’ll be separated. Some of us have been separated from those who are nearest and dearest to us―from the mother who gave us birth, from a sibling. I just spoke to one of my friends this week. He came back from Germany on Wednesday. The reason he’d gone to Germany is because his sibling sister had passed away. He’d gone there for the funeral. I think anybody who has experienced the reality of death understands why Auden would write as he did.

Don’t you remember when someone close to you died, how it just seemed so wrong that anyone would ever laugh? That anyone would make a joke about graveyards? That somehow or another the birds would even sing and that everything would go on as usual? All of that is the reality. That’s what makes this so distinctive. We will never be separated from the love of God in death. We never will! We will pass through the valley of the shadow of death,[14] but we will never be separated from the love of God.

If, like me, you wonder what this transition will mean, you must harness your mind to this. You must anticipate death on the strength of this: that death will not, cannot, separate us from God’s love; that for the Christian, to die is to fall asleep in the arms of Jesus and is to waken up and to discover that they’re actually home―home in a way that they had never, ever encountered. No, discovering that which Paul writes about in 1 Corinthians 2, that eye hasn’t seen, and ear hasn’t heard, and neither has it entered into the heart of man, the things that God has prepared for them that love him.[15]

“I am convinced,” says Paul. What a tremendous encouragement this must have been for these believers as they read this letter after the persecution of Rome began, after Nero started his dirty business, after their friends and loved ones were sent to the lions. And as they thought of the implications of the ravaging impact of the state on the lives physically of their brothers and sisters, they must have come back to Romans 8 again and again and said, “You know, this has been a dreadful separation, but they’re not separated from the love of God.”

“Death” or “life,” “angels” or “demons.” The heavenly realms of spiritual benefit or of spiritual wickedness, the unseen—in the cross, the Lord Jesus has disarmed all of these things. And Paul is the one who reminds the Colossians about that when he writes to them. Colossians chapter 2, he says, “When you were dead in your uncircumcision of your sinful nature, God made you alive with Christ, and he took all these things that were against us and nailed them to the cross.”[16] “And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.”[17] He says much the same thing right around two-thirds into Ephesians chapter 1.

“Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future…” “The present nor the future.” The passing of time. Augustine says, “I know what time is until somebody asks me what it is.”[18] The future comes in at the rate of sixty seconds a minute. It chases us. It changes us.

For the Christian, to die is to fall asleep in the arms of Jesus and is to waken up and to discover that they’re actually home.

The US Airways magazine this month is a very splendid magazine, as it turns out, and it has a terrific review of a book on the impact of the internet and the amount of messages that are passing all the time―not millions but billions. And in the article, the writer in this book is pointing out the dramatic shift that has taken place. And as a result of this, we’ve explained to ourselves that we now have so much more time, but we’re using up all that time looking to see if anybody has emailed us, or Facebooked us, or twitted us, or freaked us, or tweaked us, or whatever there is to do—and that it actually hasn’t enabled us for more communication. It hasn’t made it better for us to actually see each other―that there is no way that “LOL” comes close to a genuine laugh; there is no way that a colon and half of a parenthesis is anywhere close to the smile from the eyes of a friend.

And time chases us and harries us. One of the benefits of age is wisdom; one of the detriments of age is worry. It is of significance when you find yourself saying things not that your parents were saying but that your grandparents were saying—when you find yourself taking the newspaper and saying, “I don’t know how my grandchildren are ever going to manage in this world. There’s no possibility of them being able to make it.” That’s what my grandfather said! By God’s grace, I’m making it. My grandchildren, unless Christ returns, will make it. Because “neither the present nor the future” will separate them, in Christ, from God’s love.

God is not stopping when we pass away. This is a dreadful narcissism represented in this, isn’t there? That as long as we can make it finally to our grave, after that, you know, if God wants to go on vacation for a while, you know, so be it. But no, that’s not it at all! He’s “our help in ages past,” and he is “our hope for years to come.”[19]

And “neither height nor depth” can separate us from him. What Paul is actually doing is taking all of the notions of time and space, and he’s saying, “Listen, you are secure in Christ. He is sovereign over the present, he’s sovereign over the future, over death, over life, over demonic powers, over the angels, and he is sovereign over the vastness of creation.” And so our children learn to sing,

Jesus’ love is very wonderful.
It’s so high, you can’t get over it,
It’s so wide, you can’t get round it,
It’s so deep, you can’t get under it.
The wonderful love of Jesus.

And what we taught our children we need to live and believe ourselves.

“Neither height nor depth,” “future, nor … powers”―“any powers.” “Any powers.” And then, “nor anything else” that’s been created. Just in case you’re worried that he might have slipped something by, he gives a comprehensive summary. No loopholes! This is comprehensive. Nothing can, nothing will, “separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Since we are “in Christ” by his grace, “there is now no condemnation,”[20] and there is no separation.

I’ve read a lot of books on Romans 8 in the last while―well, in the first part of this year—none more daunting than this book by Thomas Jacomb, who was a Puritan, lived in the seventeenth century. I got it in the secondhand section of our book stall here. It’s really quite good. It runs to some 380 pages of pretty full text. And what makes this book quite remarkable is that this is his work, but only on verses 1–4. Now, don’t you wish he was your pastor? Because you wouldn’t even have reached verse 2 after all this time, and some of you were saying, “I think we’ll be in Romans 8 for the rest of our lives.”

But in his introduction, this is what he says―and I want to use his introduction as my conclusion. In this book, he writes to his readers, “If in the discussing of these points”―and this is my sentiment as I come to the end of these as well—

If, in the discussing of these points, I have said nothing but what the learned in their treatises about them have said before, yet however two things I have done: 1. According to my duty I have given my testimony to the great truths of God, let it signify what he pleases; 2. I hope I have,—I[’m] sure it ha[s] been my endeavour,—made some things, in themselves dark and intricate, to be somewhat more plain and intelligible to weaker capacities; and if I have done but that, though I have brought no new matter, my pains have not been ill-spent. My soul’s desire is that the professors of this age may be well-grounded in the articles of the Christian faith, and that they may attain to a clearer insight into gospel mysteries than what as yet they have attained to; and if what is here done shall conduce to the promoting of these most desirable things, it will be a sufficient recompense to me for all the labour that I[’ve] been at.[21]

Thomas Jacomb in the seventeenth century.

Father, we thank you tonight for “the love that drew salvation’s plan,” for “the grace that brought it down to man,” for “the mighty gulf that” you, God, have spanned “at Calvary.” For there “mercy … was great, and grace was free,” and “pardon there was multiplied to me,” and “there my burdened soul found liberty at Calvary.”[22]

Help us, Lord, to know―to know as a result of the use of our minds, to know as a result of the indwelling work of the Holy Spirit constraining our thinking and guiding us so that we might live not on the roller coaster of emotions which ebb and flow but rather in the strength of your forever love towards us in Jesus Christ. And it’s in his name we pray. Amen.

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[1] See 1 Peter 3:15.

[2] See James 1:17.

[3] Andraé Crouch, “Through It All” (1971). Lyrics lightly altered.

[4] Horatius Bonar, “Not What I Am, O Lord” (1861).

[5] See Matthew 2:1; Luke 2:1–7.

[6] See Matthew 3:13–17; Mark 1:9–11; Luke 3:21–22.

[7] See John 11:33–35.

[8] See John 4:1–26.

[9] See Matthew 26:39; Luke 22:41–42.

[10] See Matthew 27:34; Mark 15:23.

[11] Daniel W. Whittle, “I Know Whom I Have Believed” (1883). Lyrics lightly altered.

[12] Horatio G. Spafford, “It Is Well with My Soul” (1876).

[13] W. H. Auden, “Funeral Blues” (1936).

[14] See Psalm 23:4.

[15] See 1 Corinthians 2:9.

[16] Colossians 2:13−14 (paraphrased).

[17] Colossians 2:15 (NIV 1984).

[18] Augustine, Confessions 11.14.17. Paraphrased.

[19] Isaac Watts, “Our God, Our Help in Ages Past” (1719).

[20] Romans 8:1 (NIV 1984).

[21] Thomas Jacomb, preface to Sermons on the Eighth Chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, Verses 1–4 (Edinburgh: James Nichol, 1868), 7–8.

[22] William R. Newell, “At Calvary” (1895).