The Great Eight - Pt 40

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 anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:38-39 ESV).

As we close our study of “the Great Eight” in the next few days, we are going to look a little deeper into these last phrase the apostle uses to describe that which he is sure will not separate us from the love of God in Christ. His first parallel of extremes is “death and life.” It should not be a surprise that death is first on the list. Part of the reason is that it is Paul’s affirmation that believers are “being put to death all day long” (v. 36). However, it is also very personally known that death separates us from so much of what we know on earth. I am sure you have experienced some of that separation as well. It is the most urgent threat. So immediately Paul says, "Death cannot separate us from God’s love." The truth is that death does just the opposite. It increases nearness and fellowship with Christ. To the church in Philippi he writes, "I am hard pressed between the two. My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better" (Philippians 1:23). And to the Corinthians he declares "to be absent from the body and to be at home with the Lord" (2 Corinthians 5:8). It is not separation; it’s homecoming. Perhaps that’s why I have enjoyed the illustration included with this devotional so much through the years since I first discovered it. Paul is so secure in his belief that when he dies it will be no more than a great welcome home that he sees it as the ultimate victory. We do need to be honest that death is separation from family and friends and the body and all earth’s pleasures. That is why it may not look like the love of God. But Paul says it is the love of God. It’s not as though we are loved by God up to death and then loved again by God after death with a big separation from the love of God in death. Death, the experience of the cessation of the life of this body we now inhabit, is not a separation from the love of God. God loves us before death and he loves us in the act of dying and he loves us after death. And all our losses here are part of being loved by God. Hard as it feels, Paul wants us to know and experience the fact that death and all it takes from us is not a lapse in the love of God. When Christ died he secured his own people in death and in life. Nothing in life and nothing in death will undo the triumph he achieved in the cross and the resurrection. So Paul says, "For to this end Christ died and lived again, that He might be Lord both of the dead and of the living" (Romans 14:9). His lordship over life and death is invincible. So life and death cannot separate us from the love of God.