Romans is the one letter Paul wrote to a church he had never visited.
That is the address, and it matters. He did not plant this one. He is writing ahead of a trip, introducing himself and his gospel at length to people who mostly knew him by reputation.
And the church at Rome had been through something. Jewish believers had been expelled from the city under Claudius, along with the rest of the Jewish community, and had come back later to congregations that had carried on without them. By the time you reach Romans 14 and 15, Paul is dealing with the friction that left: two groups in one church, with different practices, each fairly sure about the other.
So the letter arrives in a congregation that has already lost people, already been displaced, and is already tense.
That is the room this passage was read out in.
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, King James Version
Seven things. And every one of them is concrete.
Read what is on the list
Tribulation. Distress. Persecution. Famine. Nakedness. Peril. Sword.
Not doubt. Not a bad week. Not a season of feeling far off. Famine means no food. Nakedness means no clothes. Sword means execution.
Paul is listing the things that were actually happening to Christians in that empire in that decade, and he is listing them to people who had watched some of them happen.
You are not the exception nobody wrote down. Romans 8:35 puts seven concrete disasters in a question and answers all seven the same way, and it is the Holy Spirit who keeps that answer from having a footnote in it.
And then he does something in verse thirty six that I think is the bravest thing in the chapter.
As it is written, For thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.Romans 8:36, King James Version
That is a quotation from Psalm 44, and Psalm 44 is a complaint. It is a psalm in which a nation tells God plainly that they have not forgotten Him and He has handed them over anyway. It contains the line awake, why sleepest thou, O Lord?
Paul is in the middle of the highest passage in his highest chapter and he stops to quote a lament that accuses God, and he does not soften it, and he does not explain it away.
You have been allowed to hold a complaint inside an assurance, and Romans 8:36 does exactly that in the middle of the argument. The written word quotes a psalm of protest without one word of correction, and the same Spirit who preserved that quotation is the reason nobody has to be finished with their objections to be inside this.
Then the second list, and it is built differently.
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, King James Version
Count the pairs. Death and life. Things present and things to come. Height and depth. Each pair names two opposite poles, and naming the poles is a way of saying everything in between as well. It is the same move as heaven and earth: name the two ends and the whole is named.
And then, in case somebody thought of an item he had missed, he closes it: nor any other creature.
You have a list built to have no gap in it, and the writer closed the last one himself. Romans 8:39 ends with nor any other creature, and it is His Spirit who is the reason a person cannot find the space they have been trying to fit themselves into.
Now here is what I want you to notice, and it is the reason I chose this passage for the person I am writing to.
Read both lists again and look for yourself on them.
Tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, peril, sword. Death, life, angels, principalities, powers, things present, things to come, height, depth, any other creature.
Every single item is something outside the person. Not one of them is you.
I am not going to overclaim what that means, because the passage does not build an argument on it. But it is worth saying plainly what the list is made of, because a person who is certain they have finally done the disqualifying thing has usually never noticed that they are not among the candidates.
You have been searching a list for your own name and it is a list of external things. Romans 8:35 and 8:38 name disasters and powers and never once name the person reading, and the same Spirit who kept both lists that way is the reason the search has been coming up empty.
So stop looking for the clause.
You have been going through it for years, quietly, checking whether the thing you did is somewhere in the small print, and the search has been unsuccessful, and you have taken the unsuccessful search as evidence that you have not looked hard enough.
You are not on either list, and both of them are lists of what happens to a person rather than what a person does. Romans 8:35 and 8:38 name storms and powers and never name the reader, and it is the Holy Spirit who is the reason that reaches the end of a row on a Sunday.
You have been included by somebody who quoted a complaint in the middle of the assurance. The written word puts Psalm 44 into Romans 8 without softening it, and the same Spirit who kept that verse there is the reason your unresolved objection does not put you outside.
And I will not lay one gram on you: the sentence in the corridor is not the thing that ends it. Nothing in this chapter suggests a person can talk themselves out of that love with one afternoon. What God has closed with nor any other creature, nobody reopens with a hospital conversation, and He has never once required a person to forgive themselves before He would hold on to them.
Declare this over yourself
- Thing I called the disqualifying one, you are not on either list. Romans 8:35 names seven disasters and Romans 8:38 names ten more and not one of them is me, and His Spirit reads both lists over this house. I am not the exception nobody wrote down.
- Search for the clause in the small print, get out, in the name of Jesus. You have had me checking for six years, and the written word closes with nor any other creature so that nobody could go on looking, which ends you, and the same Spirit who breathed that line is enforcing it tonight. What God sealed, I do not have to audit.
- Lord, You are the God who let a complaint stand in the middle of the assurance, and You are doing that here. Scripture quotes Psalm 44 in Romans 8:36 and softens nothing, and Your Spirit kept it there for somebody exactly like me. I am reading the seven out loud, and I am noticing that mine was never there.
Romans 8:38
This message is free, and always will be. There is nothing to unlock, nothing to subscribe to, and nothing you owe for having received it.
