Scripture Daily

Context No. 131 of 4322 · Romans

Context · Reflection

Romans 8:31-39: in context

31What then shall we say about these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? 32He who didn’t spare his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how would he not also with him freely give us all things? 33Who could bring a charge against God’s chosen ones? It is God who justifies. 34Who is he who condemns? It is Christ who died, yes rather, who was raised from the dead, who is at the right hand of God, who also makes intercession for us. 35Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Could oppression, or anguish, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? 36Even as it is written, “For your sake we are killed all day long. We were accounted as sheep for the slaughter.” 37No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38For I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, 39nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing will be able to separate us from God’s love which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

This is the end of Romans 8, and it is written as a series of questions with no one able to answer them. Paul has spent eight chapters on sin, law, and the Spirit, and here he stops arguing and starts summing up in the form of a courtroom that has run out of prosecutors.

If God is for us, who is against us? Who will bring a charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? It is Christ who died, and was raised, and is at the right hand of God, and intercedes for us. The one qualified to convict is the one doing the defending.

Then the list, and it is not abstract. Hardship, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, peril, sword. He quotes a psalm about being killed all day long and counted as sheep for slaughter, so he is not claiming these things do not happen. Then the sweep: neither death nor life, angels nor rulers, things present nor things to come, height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation. He wrote this to a church in the city that would shortly be killing Christians. The claim is not that the sword misses. It is that the sword does not separate. What am I afraid would cut me off, and does the list I fear actually appear on his list of things that cannot?

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