None Can Defeat God: A Meditation on Romans 8 for the 9th Sunday after Pentecost

Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God's elect?

It is God that justifieth.  Who is he that condemneth?

It is Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again,

who is even at the right hand of God,

who also maketh intercession for us.

 

 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?

shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution,

or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?

As it is written, For thy sake we are killed all the day long;

we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.

Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors

 through him that loved us.

 

For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life,

nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers,

nor things present, nor things to come,

Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature,

shall be able to separate us from the love of God,

which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

 

Several great theological principles emerge in St. Paul’s 8^th chapter to the Christians at Rome, but two help frame this structure of his encouragement to Christians of all times and places:  God is omnipotent in power, and His grace is inexhaustible.  Paul began by describing the power of God to call and sanctify and save all those who will come to Him, and through the work of His Son on Calvary, His overwhelming grace to pardon sin.  This is complimentary to the Gospel reading for today in Matthew 13, where the Kingdom of God is likened to a great drag net cast by God into the whole of world, and according to His power and compassion, all the souls caught up in the final judgment will be sorted by the Holy Angels according to their kind.  It is always and only God who judges, and the whole creation is subject to the Creator.  Yet it is always and only God who accomplishes the work of salvation for all people, by uniting in Jesus Christ the satisfaction of the Law through His Cross, and the grace of redemption through faith in Him.  There is no one more powerful or more good than God, so that when Jesus says that if the Son has made you free, you are free indeed—unassailable by any power of heaven, earth, or hell.

 

To be sure, there have been plenty of persecutions of Christians across the ages, and that persecution continues in our own time.  Some regions experience it more brutally, such as in parts of India, China, Africa, and the Middle East.  And some experience it in a more subtle way in Europe or the Americas, where prejudice against biblical Christianity emerges in slander, libel, social media deplatforming, loss of livelihood, or in some cases even jail.  Even so, what can the persecutions of man accomplish in separating man from God?  If God reads Facebook or Twitter, I doubt He is persuaded by either vitriol or calumny, nor affected by shadow bans and censure.  The world might look like its run by tech titans or politicians, but in reality, the King of the Universe is not stymied or overthrown.  The devil and his minions make much hay in our fallen world, getting people to turn on each other and devour each other through intrigue, crime, and war, but God is not diminished by the perturbations of this little blue marble coasting around our sun.  His Kingdom comes and His will is done even by those who rebel against Him, because only God can ensure that truth and justice prevail in eternity, and the evil fruits of wicked people are served up to those who produce them.

 

Yet just as God is eternal and omnipotent, He is also all gracious and loving.  It is by His own work that the Gospel is made present to a fallen humanity, that the Law is satisfied in the life, death, and resurrection of His Only Begotten Son, and that everyone who repents and believes in Him will not perish, but have everlasting life.  Who else could make such a promise but God alone?  The devil cannot promise eternity to anyone apart from the fires of hell destined for him and his unholy horde.  Politicians cannot promise eternity beyond the scope of their few years of rule, be it with wisdom or folly.  Criminals and malefactors might gather their ill-gotten gain for a few years, relishing in the suffering of their victims for a time, but none can escape the dragnet cast over the whole world.  Indeed, even in places where Christians are lined up like lambs for slaughter, where Islamists parade them out to behead them in gory spectacle, or Marxists ship them off to slave camps where their organs may be harvested and sold from their living bodies, or Hindu mobs gang-rape and murder nuns, or drug cartels butcher priests who dare speak out against human trafficking, the people of God are more than conquerors because their lives are hidden for eternity in Jesus Christ.  There is no persecution of God’s people that extends beyond the bounds of this brief time we are given to bear witness to Him in this world, as none of that evil which hounds Christians here will escape an eternity in hell.  God alone is the Author of Life, and the Keeper of all those who abide in Him.  Thus St. Paul can say that in spite of all these things, we are more than conquerors through Jesus Christ our Lord.

 

So if nothing in all creation can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus, a third inexorable theological maxim emerges:  all those who are saved unto eternal life, are saved only by grace through faith in Jesus Christ alone.  No man is the arbiter of his own fate, as no man ultimately is able even to judge himself.  But every man to whom the Word of the Lord has come, by the omnipotent power of the Holy Spirit working through that omnipotent Word, is given the opportunity to accept or reject the saving faith which comes through them—for as St. Paul declares elsewhere, faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God.  There is nothing outside of a man that can separate him from the love and life of God, because nothing outside of a man is powerful enough to overthrow God’s Judgment and Grace.  But inside a man lies the will to either abide by faith in the Word which comes to save him, or abide in the judgment of the Word which he rejects.  God desires all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the Truth which sets them free, but God coerces faith and love in no man, for faith and love cannot exist as products of coercion.  There is no power in all of creation that can separate a man from a blessed eternity in communion with his Maker for all time, except his own will to reject the love of God and embrace instead the darkness of eternal perdition.

 

Be of good cheer, dear Christian, for you live by grace through faith in Christ alone, and your life is kept guarded and sure in the power of your omnipotent God and King.  Those who go to perdition, who seek to destroy you and defame the God who seeks to save all people, go their way by their own choice, and will not be able to trouble you for long.  For you are the elect of Almighty God, washed in the Blood of His Son, empowered by His Holy Spirit, alive by His Eternal Word.  You have nothing to fear even if the world were to give way, the nations rage, and people imagine vain things—for despite everything the devil and his followers cast at you, you are still more than conquerors through Jesus Christ who saves you.  Soli Deo Gloria!  Amen.