Nothing can separate you from God’s love

Do you ever feel separated from God? It’s the feeling that your prayers are bouncing off the ceiling, or that there is no God to hear them. How do we make sense of that feeling when the Bible promises that nothing can or will separate us from God?

The Apostle Paul is the one who wrote, “Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?” And by that point, Paul should know. He had already experienced hardship, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness and peril. He was six down with one to go.

Yet Paul answered his own question about who will separate us from God with resounding words of encouragement: “No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced 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.”

Paul said “in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.” The Greek here is familiar to our modern ears. To be victorious or conquer in ancient Greek was nike, like the sports shoe company. However, Paul did not just say that the Christians were nike, he wrote they would be hyper nike, more than conquerors. What a great name for a Christian clothing company—hyper nike, more than nike. Paul proclaimed that Christians would not simply be victorious, they would more than conquer.

Paul wrote, “For I am convinced that neither death, nor life”—If we die, we are with God, if we live, God is with us as well.

“Nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come”—Nothing you face now, nor anything you will ever face in the future will be able to separate you from God’s love. There is nothing to fear in all your tomorrows because it can’t separate you from God. 

“Nor powers, nor height, nor depth”—Paul isn’t being literal here referring to the top of Everest and the bottom of the Grand Canyon. Rather, no matter how joyous things are, God is still there. After all, it is when everything is going well that we are most tempted to turn away from God, as we feel we no longer need God. But when things are going good God is there. Also, no matter how low you get, no matter how depressing life is, God is there.

Paul goes on to say that there is nothing “in all creation” that “will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Paul’s amazing words of encouragement remind me of an interview I read with Corrie Ten Boom. Corrie became an internationally renowned author through her autobiography of her life during Nazi occupation. Corrie was raised in a Christian home in Holland. When the Nazis came in and began to persecute the Jews, her family built “a hiding place” into their house, to hide a Jewish family. In time, Corrie’s family was found out and sent off to die with the family they had protected. Corrie was the sole survivor out of the two families.

The interviewer asked Corrie something like, “What was the greatest miracle you experienced in the extermination camps?”

She responded, “The presence of Jesus Christ.”

The interviewer was a little taken aback and sought to clarify, “But didn’t you write about miracles and deliverances in the camps?”

“Yes,” Corrie replied, “But the greatest miracle was Christ’s presence.”

Corrie Ten Boom experienced what Paul promised to the Christians in Rome—no matter how she was persecuted, none of it could separate her from God’s love in Christ Jesus. There was no greater miracle possible and nothing else needed.

So, if nothing can separate us from God’s love, then why do we experience ourselves as separated from God? Why doesn’t everyone always feel God’s love all around them? Paul wrote elsewhere about what can separate us from God. He called it sin. Paul used 24 words to describe sin in different ways. However, the word Paul liked most, was the one he used 44 times in Romans, hamartia.

Hamartia is a term from target practice, an archery term meaning, “to miss the mark.” God shows us how we are to act in the person of Jesus and through the laws, such as the Ten Commandments. That is the target we have to aim for. But missing the mark alone does not separate us from God’s love. We can get so accustomed to missing the mark that we stop trying to aim. We can come not to care about how God is calling us to live. In doing so we turn ourselves away from God.

The good news is that as we have separated ourselves from God, we can turn back. It is not that we work our way back to God, earning God’s love. Instead, we simply acknowledge that God’s love was there for us all along. We might not feel it all the time, after all God’s love is more dependable than how we feel at a given moment. We also have to trust God’s faithfulness even when our own feelings give us nothing on which to hang our hopes. Keep being faithful in prayer and Bible study, doing what you know you need to do and God will make himself known.

There is nothing in all creation that can separate you from God’s love, but you. If you find yourself separated from God, just acknowledge who did the separating and ask God to flood you once more with his love.

(The Rev. Frank Logue is pastor of King of Peace Episcopal Church in Kingsland.)

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