This is an entry in the “Acrostic Contemplations.”
Nothing can separate us from the love of God. No thing. Nothing.
It is right there in the Bible, Paul tells us so.
Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written,
“For your sake we are being killed all day long; we are accounted as sheep to be slaughtered.” [Ps. 44:22]
No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Rom 8:35-39)
That is an easy thing to say, in a way, that nothing will separate us from the love of God. The words are simply there, we read it aloud, and we have said it. Living it is the difficulty.
Many people, all of us, if we are honest with ourselves, have felt separate from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Many of us have simply felt separated from love. Any love. We have felt alone, forgotten and definitely unloved.
This is because we associate love with feelings and Paul is definitely not talking about feelings or emotions. He is acknowledging that we will have hardship and persecution, hunger and homelessness, anxiety and fear, even murder. These things are real, concrete experiences, death, joblessness, being mocked, getting dumped or divorced. There are and will be a great many emotions and feelings in experiencing these things.
No thing can separate us from God, but we can. We are able to separate ourselves from feeling the love of God in Christ Jesus. We often do. Just as in our human relationships, we all too easily put up barriers, become distant, or simply ignore God. And just as in human relationships, God doesn’t cease to exist even though we no longer enjoy God’s company and comfort. God remains, present and loving, even if we don’t feel like it’s so.
No, nothing can separate us from the “love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” that Paul is talking about here. Because Paul is not talking about feelings, Paul is talking about the enacted love of God as found in the sacrifice and resurrection of Jesus Christ. He is saying that your salvation is assured; no matter what hardship or suffering occurs in this world, no matter what we are feeling, we are saved and are assured of eternal life in Christ. Nothing, no thing, can take that away from us, not even ourselves.
