I hope you have been enjoying our time together this week as we look at our security in Christ, the great blessing that is ours in Him. We have been focusing on Romans 8 as we have looked at this passage that unpacks all of this in a very comprehensive way. We have worked our way through to the last two verses of Romans 8. We will finish off here because Paul finishes off there as well. As he does so, he has already talked about all these various ways in which we are secure in Christ. Now, nothing can separate us from the love of God. We overwhelmingly conquer, through the love of Christ. The Lord has come and delivered us from sin. No one can condemn us because God is judge and Christ has come to take our sin. All of these things are there.
Now, I guess the invisible antagonist that Paul has been dealing with is trying to find some loophole in this argument. In Romans 8:38-39, I like to say, Paul pulls out all the stops. Remember the old pipe organs? They had all these stops. Dozens of them. If you pulled out all the stops these organs could almost blow off the roof. That is what Paul is doing here. He is pulling out all the stops and kind of blowing the roof off. He comes up with every conceivable concept and enemy or antagonist that could possibly separate us from the love of Christ and basically says, no it can’t. Romans 8:38-39 says, “For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, 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, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Paul has already talked about a number of potential antagonists back in Romans 8:35. He comes up with more this time. He talks about death. Can death separate us? Can life? Can angels? Now we are moving to spirit beings. Probably here speaking of demonic angels, but even if these are good angels the next ones are not, and he speaks of rulers and so forth. I believe he is speaking of demonic creatures when he says angels. Could the devil come along and rob us of our salvation? No, not according to Paul. The term powers almost always in this context refers to demonic creatures. If the demonic creatures can’t do it, what else? This is where Paul throws the kitchen sink at it. Nothing ever created will be able to separate us from the love of God, he says. Nothing ever created. So, what is it that could separate us from the love of Christ if you already know Him as your Savior? What could that possibly be? Nothing ever created could do that. The argument I have heard most frequently against this view is that none of these things can separate me from the love of Christ, not the demons or the angels, nothing, but maybe I can separate myself.
