"Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?"
Romans 8:35
What a question Paul asks in this verse! He is not asking it from the stand point of the believer’s love for Christ. He’s not pointing to our love for Jesus, but he is looking at Jesus’ love for us. In other words can anything happen to us that will stop Jesus’ love to us? We sadly hear of this happening quite a bit in marriages today, the husband has stopped loving the wife, or the wife has stopped loving the husband. Love in many marriages seems to have become like a hole in the ground, something you can fall in to…. Or it is like a tree, something you can fall out of. Fortunately this kind of transient, convenient love, has nothing to do with the way Jesus loves believers. The greatest proof of His love was when He sacrificed Himself on the cross, in our place, for our sin! “Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so.”
We know that believers are called to suffer for Christ, (1 Peter 2:20-21). In our verse for today Paul reminds us that our suffering may include anything from tribulation, to death by execution (the sword). But in any of these evils done towards us, Jesus’ love for us is unwavering.
Tribulation: “oppression, affliction, tribulation…straits…”1
Distress: “straitness, being hemmed in on every side, without the possibility of getting out or escaping.”2
Persecution: pursuit of, pressing, prosecution of, “pursuing an enemy…in order to overtake the object of his malice, that he may destroy him.”3
Famine: the lack of food and other needs for life.
Nakedness: the inability to find clothing.
Peril: “a state of extreme and continued danger…” (Clarke)4
Sword: “slaughter; the total destruction of life, and especially beheading, and such like…” (Clarke).5
These last four evils progressively follow the first three. And yet as dreadful as any of these things are, Jesus’ love for us never wavers.
Paul said it this way, “For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord,” (Romans 8:38-39).
Believer, regardless of the trials you face today, your Lord loves you, and He cares for you. And His love for you will never cease!
1. Thayer, Thayer’s Greek Definitions, electronic version in eSword.
2. Adam Clarke, Adam Clarke’s Commentary on the Bible, electronic version in eSword.
3. Clarke, ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.