Romans 8:35-39

During the time that our corporate worship is cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic Max Harris (Assistant Pastor and Resident Scholar) will be sending out daily notes of encouragement – here his first message, dated March 15th.

Brothers and sisters in Christ,

My Bible passage for tonight is Romans 8:35-39:

³⁵ Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? ³⁶ As it is written,

“For your sake we are being killed all the day long;
we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.”

³⁷ No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. ³⁸ For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, ³⁹ 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.

Reading this very familiar passage again this afternoon, I was struck by how much more it spoke to me under the present circumstances. Some of you may be able to identify with the list of troubles in verse 35 from your own life experiences. But I can’t say I’ve ever suffered “tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword,” certainly not of the kind that Paul or the early church as a whole suffered. Nor have I lived through other tribulations such as war (as my parents and grandparents did) or any mass sickness on the scale of the 1918 flu pandemic (as my grandparents and my two-year-old father did). Now, as I face the present outbreak of COVID-19, verse 35 has come alive for me in a fresh way. No longer is this list a set of theoretical troubles, but it’s today’s real possibility. Add COVID-19 to the list.

So, the promise that none of these, however daunting, can separate us from the love of Christ also comes alive in a fresh way. In these circumstances, here and now, we need have no fear that anything will somehow prove stronger than God’s love for us in Christ. God’s love is the most precious thing that we have, and so we can be reassured that the worst cannot happen. We will not lose that most precious thing, not because we are strong, but because the God who loves us—yes, you and me!—is stronger than every threat.

The Book of Common Prayer includes a prayer that begins, “O most loving God, whose will it is for us to give thanks for all things, to fear nothing but the loss of you, and to cast all our care on you who care for us …”. The Holy Spirit, through Paul, is telling us, no less than the Roman Christians, that we need not fear the loss of God’s love in Christ, and therefore we need truly fear nothing, because the worst simply cannot happen.

“No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers,nor height nor depth, [nor COVID-19], nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

The next several months will certainly bring major inconvenience to all of us. It may bring major troubles to at least some of us. But we are also being given the opportunity to learn, in ways that we could not have done if all had continued to go comparatively smoothly, that nothing—nothing!—can separate us from the everlasting and almighty love of God. We have the opportunity not merely to believe this truth, but to live it day by day.

Grace and peace to you all from your brother in Christ,

Max