From Lost to Loved: A 30-Day Study of Romans 8ಮಾದರಿ

Romans 8:35 does not ask if suffering will come; it asks if it can “separate” us from the love of Christ. The word Paul uses, chōrizō, is the same term for divorce.[1] Paul’s use of covenant language is deliberate. He is asking if trouble can divorce us from our covenant bond in Christ’s love.

Verse 35 lists seven forces that aim to sever your bond in Christ’s love: tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, danger, and sword. These forces press in from the outside to destroy what God has joined together. Paul knows they cannot succeed because he has lived through each of them (2 Cor. 11:23–28). He found Christ’s love to be deeper and stronger than each of those trials.

To make his point, Paul reaches for Psalm 44: “For your sake we are killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered” (44:22). It is the cry of God’s people suffering precisely because they belong to Him. The psalm ends with the plea: “Redeem us for the sake of Your steadfast love.” Paul places Israel’s questions alongside his own suffering and anchors both in Christ’s unbreakable covenant love.

Nobody muscles through the sword or famine on sheer grit. You don’t white-knuckle covenant love. When suffering hits, you won’t rise to the level of your striving. Instead, you’ll fall to the level of your revelation of Christ’s love. That is why Paul endured. He wasn’t coasting on adrenaline. He was conditioned by a lifetime of crying out, clinging, and confessing Christ’s love.

Centuries later, Bunyan painted this exact tension in The Pilgrim’s Progress. Christian’s companion Pliable eagerly set out for the Celestial City, but when they fell into the Slough of Despond, he turned back: “Is this the happiness you have told me all this while of? If we have such ill speed at our first setting out, what may we expect between this and our journey’s end?”[2] With those words, he abandoned the path and hurried home to the City of Destruction. Pliable’s faith withered when tested, showing he was never rooted in Christ’s love.

Your story need not end like Pliable’s. Hardship is inevitable, but Christ’s love is not fragile. Endurance is the place where His love is proven and where the depth of your trust is laid bare.

REFLECT:
Are your current hardships driving you back like Pliable or deeper like Paul?

[1]William Arndt, Frederick W. Danker, et al., A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 1095.

[2]John Bunyan, The Pilgrim’s Progress (Norwalk, CT: The Easton Press, 1979), 18.