Or, The Inseparable Love That Makes Unconquerable Sheep
Scripture: Romans 8:35-39
Date: November 27, 2022
Speaker: Sean Higgins
Romans 8:29-30 are sometimes called the Golden Chain of salvation. God Himself chose a people to love. He loves those rebels out of hostility into righteousness and peace; those who were in the chaos of sin He calls into conformity to Christ. He brings the broken into glory, the dying to eternal life. Is there a more potent reality in time and space than God’s love? Jesus is the Son of love, the Spirit sheds the love of God in our hearts.
The sending of the Son by the Father, and the sacrifice of the Son, and the help of the Spirit, along with all the promises through suffering, are love-driven. Sovereign authority and power and grace are focused through a laser-like love for the elect. We cannot be separated from this love, and in this love we cannot lose, even if we lose our physical possessions or status or breath.
Romans 8:32 still is the crux and crest of (what I’m calling) the Golden Wave of comfort. God does not make partial provision for His people. The gift of Christ to death includes all gifts for our salvation, including sanctification, including endurance and peace and hope through suffering. Bring on the accusers. God is for us, God has counted us righteous. Jesus is praying for us even now. So bring on the trouble and troublers and threats. We are loved (verses 35, 37, 39): the love of Christ, loved by Him, the love of God in Christ.
May these certainties fill the sails of your faith and propel your hope and courage forward, that you might know yourselves to be unconquerable sheep.
God is the greatest Champion, the one who fights for us. He is the greatest Benefactor, who does us good. He is the greatest Judge and Advocate. All of this is out of His love; He is the greatest Belover. (Of course, “beloved” is our word, not belover, but this is the point.)
The rhetorical questions keep flowing from verse 31 into verse 35, then Paul quotes a psalm, asserts our position, and finishes with an emphatic exultation.
There are two bursts of threats, one in verse 35, the second in verses 38-39. The first list seems very personal while the following is cosmological. To call these categorical means that they are not ambiguous, they are not open to more than one interpretation, but they are explicitly emphatic. Even more, they establish mental shelves where our thoughts about God’s love fit.
Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword?
A “who” made charges (verse 33), a “who” attempted to condemn (verse 34), now some whos try to separate. Sin separated us from God, and this is our greatest loss. Separation from God is hell, it’s death. But our salvation from sin means that none can separate us from the Son’s love (this is a subjective genitive, referring to Christ’s love for us, not an objective genitive, which would be our love for Christ. We know better than to depend on the resoluteness of our affections. Verse 37 leaves no doubt: “He who loved us.”)
The second question is personal, even though the persons are included by the damage they inflict.
Tribulation is “pressure” and distress is to be “narrowed” or squeezed, so both are more general words for pain than persecution which includes hostility and harassment, but this isn’t caused by gravity, it’s caused by haters. Sinful men don’t want to see anyone happy, at peace, enjoying love. Famine or “hunger” and nakedness could be from weather, but more likely from tyrants and commies making bad policies, such as wicked rulers in the Psalms and modern day Democrats. Danger and sword are violence, even execution, whether one-off or movements of whole armies.
No one, intentionally or unintentionally, directly or from a distance, can mess with or cut us off from the affection of Christ.
It’s a quote that takes a moment to put together, especially heading into the “more than conquerors” in the next verse.
As it is written, ”For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.”
It’s from Psalm 44:22, written by the Sons of Korah. The people are suffering, but it doesn’t seem to be discipline for sin. They claim that they haven’t forgotten the LORD (verses 17, 20), that they hadn’t disobeyed (verse 18), and yet it seemed in that moment that God was hiding His face and had forgotten their affliction (verse 24).
The comparison is between sheep who can’t be separated from their shepherd’s love and sheep who are also lined up to be killed. They aren’t just sheered, shorn of wool, but slaughtered as if for meat; this isn’t even for sacrifices but for selling. The shepherd loves them but here it looks like others destroy the sheep because of the shepherd, it’s happening for your sake .
There is a kind of inseparable love that not even slaughter can touch.
The straight answer:
[But] in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.
In suffering and groaning, even to butchering like livestock, which is the extreme, in rather than instead of, and in them all , we win.
More than conquerors at least goes back to the Geneva Bible in 1560, picked up by the KJV, NIV, ESV. Other English translations for the phrase: NASB “we overwhelmingly conquer”, HCSB “we are more than victorious”, NET “we have complete victory”, Tyndale “we overcome strongly.”
It’s one word in Greek: ὑπερνικῶμεν (hupernikōmen) a compound verb: super-victory-ing, hyper-nike-ing, over-conquering.
Which means that we do need to consider the divine definition of hyper-winning.
Our young people need to know this. Our older saints need to know this. We need to know it for the culture “war,” for the cultural mandate, for every millennial position, for making Jews jealous, for living and dying like those in the Hall of Faith “of whom the world was not worthy” (Hebrews 11:32-38), whether by faith they conquered kingdoms or were sawn in two. In the Apocalypse men conquer the accuser of the brethren by the blood of the Lamb as they “loved not their lives even unto death” (Revelation 12:11). In Deuteronomic blessings as far as the curse is found, in holiday bonuses enjoyed in hope that there are even better joys that await the faithful, and in joyful accepting of the plunder of property in anticipation of a better possession (Hebrews 10:34). We are more than winners, so we don’t need a sad-sack attitude.
It’s all through the one having loved us , a substantival participle; He can be characterized by the heart of His cross work. So we conquer through the cross, and even in dying there’s a winning, a thousand sleepless nights or one shot to the head.
Paul can get for happy (there are four “for”s in the first six verses of chapter 8). Here is “for” leads into more exultation (triumphant jubilation) than explanation (relevant reasons).
For I am sure that neither death nor life, neither angels nor rulers, nor things present or things to come, neither powers, or heights or depths, nor anything also in creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
He’s convinced, and he shares it, that we also might have comfort and courage.
A second thought about this list not only distinguishes this set from verse 35 in scale but also in species. Verse 35 is personal, and not many of them can be spun positive. Not all, maybe not even most, are negative here.
The lexical groupings start with death and life . Death would be the end of persecution and killing, or old age, and often feared as a threat, but what of life separating us? Angels probably doesn’t refer to demons, which is typically a different Greek word, though good angels could be a temptation to some to worship (see Colossians 2:18). Rulers (or “principalities”) don’t have to be the contrast, but spiritual beings, whether possible idols, or considered in all their mustered hostility, they still aren’t more powerful than God. Present things , problems or distractions, future things , fears or failures, or even any good, now and then. Height and depth are more than spatial considerations, they were typical terms of astronomy, “the space above the horizon (which would be the domain of many transcendent forces” (BAGD). Neither any other thing of creation, whatever else, no other part anywhere, can separate us.
There is no question about His position toward us; He is for us. There is no question about His provision for us; He will give us all things necessary. There is no question about His protection of us; no accusations stick. There is no question about His eternal love for us.
Beloved, is your faith weak or strong? It may be often and in many ways assailed and weakened. But according to the authority of God’s Word, and in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, I exhort you to “keep yourselves in the love of God.”
But you, beloved, building yourselves up in your most holy faith and praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life. (Jude 1:20–21)
Thank God for the victory He gives us through our Lord Jesus Christ (1 Corinthians 15:57). In His love we are winning a most glorious victory, come hell or high sorrow.
Church, neither brain bleeds or cancer, neither too much or too little money, neither cranky neighbors or disobedient kids, neither hospital days or holidays, neither sickness or sleeplessness, can snatch you out of the Father’s or the Shepherd’s hand. So give an Amen of faith to the truth of His love, and follow where He leads.
[M]ay you have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen. (Ephesians 3:18–21, ESV)