Romans 8:35 Most Misunderstood Passage in the World Today

Lesson Transcript

Okay, good morning. We're going to be continuing to go through Romans, and this morning we're in Romans 8:35-39. I prepared a nice PowerPoint presentation for you, but we couldn't communicate between the computer and the projector. It sometimes happens with humans that we don't communicate well. Anyway, but we will—people taught Sunday school before there was PowerPoint, so I think we can work through it okay.

But if you want to turn in your Bibles to Romans 8 and start with verse 35, this is probably today one of the most misunderstood verses of the Bible and misused with some pretty bad consequences. Paul says, "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?" And we'll read the rest of the passage, but let's just look at that verse, and we'll be talking about that verse mainly today.

Now, how many of you—boy, this is a week—it's such a special week. I don't know if any of you even noticed the Sunday school when I sent it out. Did any of you get a chance to read it? Okay. A couple of hands. Okay. So we're going to count on a couple of you to have the answers this morning. Okay. So he starts off saying, "What shall separate us from the love of Christ?" Now, that expression, the love of Christ, has two possible meanings.

Maybe it has even more than that, but there's at least two that I'm thinking of that that expression, love of Christ, can mean. Does anyone have a thought on that? It's not a trick—none of these are trick questions. What could mean his love for us or our love for him? Exactly. So when you just see the expression, love of Christ or love of God, it could be talking about our love for Christ. It could be talking about his love for us. When you just see the expression by itself, then you don't know.

You're going to have to study the context to know what it means. It would be like if I say, "What motivates me to go to work each day is the love of my wife." Okay? Well, that could mean two things. It could mean, "What motivates me to go to work is I love my wife so much. I want to work and provide for her, and that keeps me going." But it could also mean, "What motivates me to go to work each day is my wife's love for me.

She does so much for me, then I want to repay that love." And you don't know unless you hear the rest of it. You just hear the expression. You wouldn't know what I mean. And so it's the same way with the expression, love of Christ. And it works the same way whether you're in Greek or in English. It's an ambiguous expression. Either way, you've got to look at the rest of the context to know what it means.

Now, I went through the New Testament just doing a word search for the expressions, love of Christ and love of God, and I found that those two—at least in the New King James—those two expressions occur 14 times in the New Testament. Seven of those 14 times, the passage is talking about our love for God or our love for Christ. Six of them, it's talking about God's love for us or Christ's love for us. And then the 14th one, I don't think anyone knows. It could be either one. His love for us or our love for him.

Either one would fit. So we don't know. So in this passage, what can separate us from the love of Christ? The problem is, at least when I was a member of an evangelical church, that was always taught as it's talking about Christ's love for us. And this was one of the big proof texts for unconditional eternal security that no matter—the church taught—no matter what you do, you can commit adultery, murder, no matter what you do. Once you've been saved, then you cannot lose your salvation. Christ always loves you.

There is nothing you can do that would ever separate you from him loving you. That's what our church taught. And yeah, you read that verse that way, and every time you read it, that's what you read into it. We're going to see this morning it can have quite a different meaning. Turn in your Bibles, if you would, to 1 John 5:2-3. He says this, "By this we know that we love the children of God when we love God and keep his commandments.

For this is the love of God that we keep his commandments, and his commandments are not burdensome." All right. So there, what is it talking about when it says the love of God? Is it talking about his love for us or our love for him? Our love for him. Our love for him. Yeah. Like I say, none of these are trick questions. Common sense questions. Okay. I think anyone reading that passage is pretty clear. It means his love for us. Okay. But now turn over to chapter 4 in 1 John. You said it wrong. What did I say?

You said it means his love for us. Okay. That's how confusing it is. So yeah, I said that wrong. Thank you for correcting me. So yeah, there it means our love for him. Okay. Now, let's look at 1 John 4:9. I'll see if I can not say this one backwards. Okay. In this, the love of God was manifested toward us, that God has sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him. Okay. So there, what does love of God mean? His love for us. His love for us. I think that's so clear from the context.

So you've got to look at the context. Like I say, love of God or love of Christ, it can mean either thing. So Romans 8:35, like I say, our Bible says, "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?" In the Greek, you could also translate that, "Who shall separate us from love for Christ?" You can go either way with it.

In English, if you wanted to make it where it was clear, where it was not ambiguous, you'd say, "Who shall separate us from our love for Christ?" If that's what that passage means, that would make it crystal clear. But like I say, we commonly say in English, love of God, love of Christ, love of my wife, love of my children. And well, if we say my, then we perhaps know. But like I say, often you're going to have to hear the whole context to know what it means.

Now, I had a discussion with the pastor of our church when I was evangelical just on the subject of unconditional eternal security because that was like a bedrock teaching of our church. If you question that, they question whether you were even a Christian. If you thought that you could do something and that would cost you your salvation, then you're not a Christian. I remember talking to the pastor, and he quoted this verse, "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?

Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?" He said, "See, there's nothing you can do. He's going to love you no matter what you do." And I forget exactly what I said to him, but I was a little bit unconvinced, but I wasn't sure what that verse had meant. Now, Paul actually, by the context, helps us to see what he's talking about because he follows it up when he's listing what can separate us from love of Christ.

He says, "Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?" Okay. Look at that list there. Now, tell me, is that a list of sins or is that a list of sufferings on behalf of Christ? Sufferings. Sufferings. What sin is in there? Tribulation. We suffer tribulation. Is that a sin? We suffer distress. Persecution. Is that a sin? Oh, I'm suffering persecution. Please forgive me, Father. Famine or hunger would be a better translation. We suffer hunger for Christ.

Nakedness, meaning you have little to wear. Peril, sword. I mean, Paul is listing all the things that he has suffered for Christ. He's not listing a bunch of sins, but yeah, the pastor was like, "This was saying adultery, murder, theft, lying." It's like, "Huh?" That's not the list that he's giving. He's giving this list of all the things that he and other Christians were suffering for Christ. Turn in your Bible to 2 Corinthians 6:4-6. Okay. 2 Corinthians 6:4-6.

But in all things, we commend ourselves as ministers of God. Now, listen to what he says. In much patience, in tribulations, in needs, in distresses, in stripes, in imprisonments, in tumults, in labors, in sleeplessness, in fastings or hunger, by purity, by knowledge, by long-suffering, by kindness, by the Holy Spirit, by sincere love. So he starts off with a list of all of the things by which he commends himself or displays his ministry on their behalf. And it's a very similar kind of list that he gives there.

And there's several other passages that we could quote as well. So I'd have to ask you, what kind of Lord would Christ be if he did stop loving us because we were suffering persecution, tribulation, famine, and the sword on his behalf? What kind of Lord would he be? Or if Paul is trying to argue that no matter how we sin, Christ is still going to love us, that nothing can separate us from that, he would be making a terrible argument. "Well, yeah, let me demonstrate.

If you suffer tribulation, if you suffer persecution, if you suffer hunger, see, Christ still loves you." Well, if his point is that no matter what sin you commit, he's going to still love you, he's not making a very good argument. Paul can sometimes be hard to understand, but he doesn't usually make poor arguments. And that would be a very poor argument. And like I say, so it's really a misuse to say, "See, no matter how you sin, Christ still loves you." But that's how it's used.

That's maybe not how you grew up understanding this verse. I don't know. But yeah, it's what I was taught, and so that was always in my mind. I'm curious, yeah, any of you, how did you grow up understanding this verse? Or did you even think about this verse? I was taught exactly like you were taught growing up. Okay. Okay. You too. You too. Okay. Baptist, Church of Christ, or Methodist. Methodist. Okay. All right. What about you, Anabaptist? I think we would have said that, but not lived. What do you mean?

I don't think historically we would believe that. We believe the idea that you could be separate from Christ, but that verse was quoted many times in light of what you're saying. Okay. In the same way. Right. Right. It's a sin the wrong thing to do. Right. And I know what you mean. Yeah. Because I think almost all Anabaptists would know, "No, you can't just commit whatever sin you want, and it's all going to be okay in the end." But we've been so influenced by Protestant theology, like you say.

We'll quote their stuff the way they quote it, and we don't really believe it, but we still say it from the pulpit, whatever. Now, like I say, I went through thinking that's Paul was talking about our love. I mean, Christ's love for us. I will get that twisted a thousand times where I'm over this morning. But I would say, "Well, he's not listing sins." I didn't know exactly what Paul was saying. And then light kind of went on in my head.

A couple of years ago, I was reading Origen's commentary on Romans, and it's like, "Well, I'm going to read it to you. I'm sorry the PowerPoint doesn't work. We would have it up here. But let me just read you how he was just understanding this passage. To him, it was just a given." He said, "If the soul has ascended to this state of perfection so that it loves God with all its heart and with all its mind and with all its strength and loves its neighbor as itself, what room will there be for sin?

After all, it is on this account as well as that in the law that love is said to be the first commandment. And in the Gospels, love is commanded above everything else." And he continues. Okay. So he's talking about our love for God. Okay. "For the Apostle Paul had ascended to this degree of perfection." He doesn't mean sinlessness, but he means completeness. "And standing in it, he confidently said, 'For who will separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus?

Will affliction or distress or famine or nakedness or peril or sword?' And again, 'But I am certain that neither life nor death nor things present nor things to come nor angels nor powers nor heights nor depth nor any other creature will be able to separate us from love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.'" And after quoting that, he says, "From all of this, it is plainly shown that none of these things enumerated by the Apostle can separate us from our love for God when we have ascended to that peak of perfection."

So to him, it was just obvious Paul is talking about our love of God.

And he's declaring on his behalf and on any other Christian who lived the same kind of committed life. He's saying, "Who will separate us from love of Christ?" Meaning our love of Christ. Who will do it? It doesn't matter what Satan brings against us: tribulation, distress, hunger, nakedness, whatever. You're not going to cause me to quit loving Christ.

And even though we're talking on a passage that's perhaps more theological, I think there's a very wonderful application to it that is something every one of us should be able to say. And I don't think every Christian can say that honestly, but every Christian needs to reach a state where they can say that.

Not in overconfidence in ourselves that, "Oh, yeah, Satan can't stumble us." We don't want to get overconfident, but it was a confidence of walking so closely with Christ, of being so filled with the Spirit of God that you can say to Satan, "Nothing you do is going to make me stop loving Christ. Bring on your worst. I am not going to stop loving him." Now, that may sound like I say, like overconfidence, but Paul knew where he stood with Christ, and he knew how unshakable his faith was.

And the early Christians make this kind of statement all the time to the Romans. "It doesn't matter what you do to us. Put us in the arenas. Throw us to lions. Crucify us. Torture us. We are not going to renounce Christ." And they said that in their writings to the pagan Romans. Now, that didn't mean that nobody ever forsook their faith in persecution, but it was a very small percentage. And it was that unshakable faith, that confidence that we will not forsake our love for Christ. Bring on your worst.

We will not stop loving Christ. And the Roman Empire brought on its worst. It did everything it could to make the Christians give up Christianity, and they wouldn't do it. And after 300 years, the Roman Empire finally said, "We quit. We cannot beat you Christians. We're going to join you." Unfortunately, that didn't work out very good for Christians. But I mean, that was the extent. The mightiest empire the world had ever known. And here was a group of defenseless persons who fought back with nothing.

And Rome absolutely could not beat them because they could say just like Paul, "Nothing will separate us from our love of Christ. You bring on what you want." And like I say, we should have that unshakable confidence today. Not getting overconfident. He could say this because of Christ's power being in us, not that he thought in his own flesh that he could never stumble on his own. All right. Cyprian.

The reason I'm reading the early Christians, particularly to those of you who don't fellowship with us normally, it's not like there's anything magic in them. But we were talking this weekend and conversing with some of our brothers and sisters who are from Brazil. And there is a difference between a native speaker of a language and someone who's maybe learned it. I mean, you can learn it, and you can maybe even talk fluently. You never talk like a native speaker.

You never get all the nuances that a native speaker gets. And so when we go back to the early Christians, we're reading people. This was their language. This is the language they thought in, that they spoke, that they dreamed in. This was their language. So we get to see, yeah, how people who actually lived there, how they understood these writings. Not that they are inspired, but the insights from living there and also knowing how the church was preaching this.

So after reading that in Origen, his commentary of Romans, I thought, "Huh, I ought to go back and see if any other early Christians talk about this verse." And I found that a couple of them did. I'm not going to read you all the quotations, but I want to just read you a couple of them. It's funny, not a single one of them thought this was talking about Christ's love for us. I mean, they all understood it. Yeah, it's obvious he's talking about his love for Christ or our love as committed Christians.

So Cyprian says, "Now, he was writing this at a time when the Christians had had maybe 20 years of peace in the Roman Empire. No one had persecuted them for about 20 years or so." Now, this is like around the year 250. And suddenly, most of the persecutions had not come from the emperor himself. Some of them had. Yeah, but suddenly, then the whole empire, the Roman emperor decided, "Okay, these Christians are the cause of all the troubles in our empire." Kind of a convenient scapegoat.

And of course, they had no involvement in any of the problems. But it's like, "If we can get rid of these Christians, then the gods will bless us and all of that." And so, yeah, it was a really it was short, but it was extremely intense. And so Cyprian was a Christian bishop or overseer who lived in that, in the city of Carthage.

And so encouraging his fellow brothers and sisters to remain firm, he said, "What more glorious or blessed thing can happen to any man than to confess the Lord God in death itself before his very executioners? What is more glorious than among the raging and varied and exquisite tortures of worldly power, even when the body is wracked and torn and cut to pieces, to confess Christ, the Son of God, with a spirit that is still free?" That is pretty unshakable.

It sounds even strange to us because we haven't had to live in that kind of persecution. But yeah, they made it like we are going to be conquerors and go ahead and torture us, and this is what we glory in, that you're not going to be able to beat us.

Again, not overconfidence, but to just go into the persecution that, "Okay, this is war, and this is how we fight, not with swords, but with unshakable love and faith." He goes on and he says, "For to this battle, our Lord, as with the trumpet of his gospel, urges us on when he says, 'He that loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me. And he who loves his own soul more than me is not worthy of me.

And he that does not take up his cross and follow after me is not worthy of me.' And again, blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. And again, you shall stand before kings and powers, and brother shall deliver a brother to death and father to son. But he who endures to the end shall be saved. Moreover, the Apostle says, 'Who shall separate us from love of Christ?

Shall tribulation or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or peril or sword?' As it is written, 'For your sake, we are killed all day long. We are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.' Nay, in all these things, we are more than conquerors for him who has loved us." So Christ first loved us, and in return, we love him. He died for us, and so we need to be willing to die for him. And like I say, it was obvious that this is what Paul was saying, and he lived it.

By the time he wrote Romans, he had wrote the letter to the Corinthians before Romans, and he lists how many times he had been imprisoned, how many times he had been flogged, stoned. I mean, on and on. The list, a lot of people want to be apostles, but he was saying, "These are the qualifications. If you question my qualifications as apostle, this is what they are. I've been stoned this many times. I've been flogged to the point of near death this many times.

I've been shipwrecked this many times." He goes on a list. Not too many people want to be apostles when those are the earmarks of what an apostle is. So as Paul said in verses 36 to 39, "As it is written, 'For your sake, we are killed all day long. We are accounted as sheep for the slaughter. Yet in all these things, we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.'" So his love for us enables us to love him in return, and it's something he requires.

He said, "He who loves father or mother or brother or sister more than we love him is not worthy of him." So that part of the Gospel is often not preached. Everyone wants to hear about Christ's love for us, and that's the beginning of the Gospel. Without his love for us, we couldn't be here. Nothing could happen. But the rest of the Gospel is, "Yeah, he who loves father or mother more than me." So yeah, we can't stop there. He showed his love for us. He died for us, was tortured for us.

Now he calls us to have the same kind of love. Paul says, "For I am persuaded that neither death nor life nor angels nor principalities nor powers." And here he's talking about all of the wicked forces that are arrayed against us, the wicked angels, principalities that those would be earthly, I think, governments that are against us. The powers, I think, are some kind of demonic force that he's talking about, or things present or things to come.

He said, "Yeah, whether it's here or you've got something new in plan that you're going to try to bring against us, nothing is going to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus, our Lord." So it's not just earthly battles we're fighting. We're fighting against spiritual forces that want to shut us down. And like I say, we need to be able to say with confidence, "No, you, Satan, you are not going to win. You will not separate us from our love of Christ. It is that strong.

He died for me, and I am willing to die for him." That is what we need to be able to say. That's the kind of faith, like I say, that defeated the Roman Empire. John Chrysostom, another early Christian bishop, he talks about this verse. And again, they're all reading it the same way. He said, "If some of us are ungrateful to God, the same was not true of Paul.

He was so alive through the Spirit and was so on fire with love for God as to utter those words worthy of his Spirit and to cry aloud with the words, 'Who will cut us off from the love of Christ?'" See the point of his remark? See the passion of his overwhelming desire? See his burning love? "Who will cut us off? What is there," he says, "that has the power to deprive us from loving God? Anything visible? Anything invisible?

No, there's nothing." Then in his wish to enumerate everything individually and to make clear to us all the irrepressible love he had for the Lord, he added distress, hardship, hunger, persecution, nakedness, danger, the sword. "What is there," he says, "of all the problems besetting us that could separate us from our love of God?" So again, yeah, let's go home this weekend, all of us, with that resolve that I'm not going to let anything. And it could just be, I don't want to say everyday sins.

I don't know that any sin is an everyday sin. But like I say, we're not, you know, we don't have to worry about going home and finding there's just been a proclamation that Christians have been outlawed and we're going to be forced to either renounce Christ or to go to jail. No, that's not going to happen. But we are going to go home and face sins of everyday life that we can let separate us. We can love other things in this world more than we love Christ.

And we can, they didn't even let persecution separate them, but we'll just let worldliness. We'll just let all the things this world has to offer. Say nothing. I mean, I think he learned his lesson to a large degree. You're not going to beat Christians with persecution. He still tries it, but he realizes he gets a lot further just using materialism, using luxuries, using, like I say, the world's entertainment, whatever that will get us, he will have more success.

But now, just to kind of two more verses and we will end with this. Turning your Bibles to John 15:9 and 10, Jesus himself, I mean, in his own words, he told us, "No, you can separate us from love of God, from my love for you." Okay? Notice what he says, John 15:9 and 10. He said, "As the Father loved me, I also have loved you." Okay? So it all begins with God's love. We wouldn't be loving him if he didn't first love us. That's all throughout scripture, it tells us that.

But now he says, "Abide in my love." Abide means live, it's the place where you live. It's where you stay. Okay? Remain in my love. So he says, "Okay, I love you just as the Father loved me, but now you have to do something to remain in my love." This is what he says, "If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in his love." So if you keep my commandments, you abide in my love.

The implication is, if you don't keep his commandments, you don't abide in his love. It's not an automatic thing. It's not true that nothing can separate us from Christ's love. He says, "Disobedience will separate you." If you want to abide in my love, if that's where you want to live, and I think all of us want to live there, if we don't have his love, then we don't have life. I mean, that is the only place to live. Then we need to keep his commandments. And the final verse, Jude 1:21, why don't you turn there?

And here he gives us an exhortation. Jude, as far as we know, was the half-brother of Jesus, the son of Joseph and Mary. And he says this, Jude 1:21, "Keep yourselves in the love of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life." I think love of God there means God's love for us.

So he says, "Keep yourselves in it." If it was automatic, he wouldn't need to say, "Keep yourselves in it." He admonishes to do that because it is not automatic that we can lose his love in the sense that we can lose our relationship with him as a believer, as a Christian. We can lose the hope of eternal life. I think in a sense, God loves everyone, even the wicked. I don't think anything can ever stop that.

But in the sense that he loves us as one of his own, that he's going to bring us home, that we have to maintain, we have to work to keep ourselves there. And that's through maintaining a close relationship with him where his love and his power and his spirit is abiding in us. Okay. Does anyone have any final thoughts or questions on that?

I just had to think as I was reading over this passage this morning that all of this is set in the context of the beginning of the chapter where he talks about not walking after the flesh, but walking in the Spirit. So I don't know where we got right at the place where we start using that passage to excuse sin. Yeah. I don't know how we got there. I think it starts with, of course, with Luther.

You start off with the proposition, "You cannot lose your salvation no matter what you do." And then once that's in your mind, then you're going to read that into a lot of verses in the Bible that aren't saying that. And then once it's read that way, like I say, even though I always thought, "Well, it doesn't list sins." He's just saying that no third party can separate me.

He doesn't say, "I can't separate myself." But yeah, it always bothered me, but I just considered it was always read as if it's talking about Christ's love for us. Yeah, I always felt like I didn't have a strong answer to that. So yeah, I was surprised. Like I say, I couldn't find a single one of them who thought that that's what it was talking about, his love for us. They all understood Paul is talking about his love, he and the apostles and the other spirit-begotten Christians.

Nothing will separate us from loving Christ. So I hope that is our resolve today. Thank you for being a part of the Sound Faith Channel as we expand the Kingdom of God, seizing territory from Satan with every broadcast. This channel is made possible because of all of your generous gifts and donations. If you would like to partner with the Sound Faith Channel in our battle to usher in the Kingdom of God, you can make a one-time donation or give monthly on our website. The link is in the description below.

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