We come to the end of one of the most amazing chapters in the Bible, which can be titled “Life in the Spirit.” We have seen that life in the Law of the Spirit makes us heirs with Jesus the King. We have seen that if we suffer with him, we have a future glory that can scarcely be described, hoping for what we do not see, waiting for it with patience.
This is all due to God’s everlasting love because we are in perfect unity with God, even as we continuously fall back to disunity at the fork in the road. We go through the Cycle of Perfect Unity many times before we go home to Jesus, improving and learning a bit more each time, and striving toward more sincere repentance, and then receiving once again God’s never-ending love and once again his forgiveness and restoration:
“What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things” (Rom 8:31-32).
I love these two verses! God gave up his own Son for us – that is, he parted with him during the time Jesus was on earth with us. But God did not lose his Son; he got him back! For now God’s Son is with his Father once again, and it is the two of them in concert with the Holy Spirit inside of us who graciously give us all things!
“Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died – more than that, who was raised – who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us” (Rom 8:33-34).
Here we encounter the two-way street in perfect unity with God. Who shall bring charges and who is to condemn? We are quick to apply this to ourselves as God’s elect, and of course this is true. But we are glacially slow to apply it to another Son of God who has offended us, making us angry – something that happens all too often in churches.
I must forgive and forget the slings and arrows that sometimes dominate church life, let alone secular life. My sinful nature is more prone to putting up my dukes to defend myself.
But that is not suffering with Christ!
Over and over I need to recite to myself that it is God who justifies or convicts, both the one who offends me and myself, as equal – and forgiven – Sons of God:
“Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? As it is written, ‘For your sake we are being killed all day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered’” (Rom 8:35-36; Psalm 44:22).
That brother or sister in Christ who disagrees with me is the very person with whom I must reconcile, so that we can face the onslaught of an evil world together. Is this easy? No. But compared to those who regard me as a sheep to be slaughtered, that person who knows Christ is my greatest ally on this side of heaven!
“No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure 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” (Rom 8:37-39).
When we reconcile with a fellow believer in the ultimate example of perfect unity, these final three verses in Romans 8 work both ways: direct connection to the love of God in heaven, and solidarity with a brother or sister on this earth.
Nothing can separate us!