Inseperable

Hello everyone. I hope things are going well for all of you.  We’ve been going through the Bible understanding the doctrine of the Trinity. Right now, we’re in the epistle to the Romans. We’ve been spending a lot of time in the 8th chapter and that’s where we’re going to be again tonight. We’re starting at verse 31 tonight and going all the way through the end, to verse 39:

³¹What, then, shall we say in response to this? If God is for us, who can be against us?³²He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? ³³Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. ³⁴Who is he that condemns? Christ Jesus, who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. ³⁵Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? ³⁶As it is written:
“For your sake we face death all day long;
we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.” ³⁷No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. ³⁸For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, ³⁹neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Once again, let me remind readers that I am not getting into secondary issues here. This is a passage often used in the debate on eternal security and while I have a stance on that, I do not intend to write on the topic. However, this is a passage on justification no doubt and it is interesting that it is a constant interplay between the Father and the Son.

God is said to have given up his own Son. This was something unique. It wasn’t like God could make another Son and give him up. He couldn’t. John 1:18 has already shown us that this is the only one. There is none like him and there can never be one who is exactly like him. We shall be like him one day in our moral and human character, but certainly not in the sense of being eternal deity!

God is the one who justifies in Pauline thought and in this process is the Son who is making intercession. The two are constantly working together. God is the one who justifies and he justifies us in Christ Jesus the Lord.

It’s also interesting how he speaks about being separated from the love of Christ. It’s not the love of YHWH. It’s the love of Christ. How did Christ earn such a position in Paul’s Jewish mind? It can only be that he had shown who he was by his resurrection. He was not a blasphemer. He’d said the truth. It could be when Paul got hit on the road he realized immediately that all Jesus had said about himself was true and had to work out the ramifications of that.

When we get to the end, we find that nothing can separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus. There is no concept of the love of God apart from the work of Christ. Now this doesn’t mean that OT saints didn’t know the love of God or those who never heard necessarily, but it means if there had been no Christ, there would have been no justification whereby we could be made righteous and enter into the love of God. Apart from Christ, we are enemies of God. In him, we are not.

So where are you today?