No Separation in Christ
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.” — Rom. viii. 38, 39.
HE challenge contained in these two verses forms an appropriate topic in approaching the close of this Volume. As “in Christ” began, so “in Christ” ends this beautiful eighth of Romans. To repeat what was noted in a previous meditation, and which has frequently been adverted to by others, the “no condemnation” in Him, of the opening verse, is followed by the “no separation” FROM Him, in the concluding one.
As we peruse the context of the chapter, we seem to be ever and anon in the midst of a spiritual conflict, surrounded with the clang of battle. But now the victorious standard is planted on the height far above the din of encounter. In what precedes, we are conscious of toiling up the steeps of the mountain side; now we are within sight of the summit, above and beyond the storm-clouds. He puts the shout of triumph into his own lips, and the lips of all others who are safe in Christ.
If, as has been surmised, one great object the Apostle had in writing this Roman Epistle, was for the purpose of sustaining his brethren in the Imperial city who were either suffering themselves, or had seen their beloved relatives suffering at the cruel hands of Nero, we can imagine how gracious and acceptable would be the solace thus conveyed: the elevating assurance that, though subjected to the miscarriage of justice at a human tribunal, and condemned by the behest of a ferocious earthly tyrant, there was One *’ judging righteous judgment “who uttered the exculpatory sentence —” not condemned And, better still, if, in the case of not a few, imprisonment and martyrdom had produced their mournful result in the severance of earthly fellowships, how cheering the thought that there was One from whose love and presence there could be “no separation” no, not even by pang or torture, flame or sword! Hear the words of heart-cheer he puts into the lips of the comrades who are falling thickly around him; — words which will, in due time be appropriate to himself at a similar hour: — “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 shaE separate us from the love of Christ?” (Rom. viii.
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Can we, in some feeble measure, enter into the full meaning of this chapter, and make its glorious terminating challenge our own? Can we sing the wondrous song of victory with its opening and closing keynote — “in Cheist “?
Life “shall not separate!” The world may rock to ruin; the stars may fall from their orbits; or rather, nature’s funeral pile must be lighted; Creation, hoary with years, must in due time succumb to the inevitable laws of decadence. There is the same transience in the more sacred provinces of life. Earthly relationships and friendships are at the best fickle, mutable, arbitrary. Change they may, perish at some time they must. Not so is the bond of fellowship uniting us with Christ. There are no such precarious ties and tenures here; no such sorrowful farewells. It is union beyond the reach of change and peril, chance and vicissitude. “He alone,” says Augustine, “never loseth what is dear to him, to whom all things are dear in Him who is never lost!”
Death shall not separate. Death! What! that which is so sadly and irrevocably allied with the thought of separation! Yet here too, in the noblest sense of it, separation there is not, and cannot be. “I give unto them eternal life, and they shall never perish.” At what is truly misnamed ‘the closing hour, Being (immortal being) is only interrupted: no, not even is it suspended, but rather transferred, exalted, perfected. The stream of existence is indeed for the moment lost from view; but not as the river of Palestine is lost in the gloomy depths of the Dead Sea, shut up in that gleamless caldron with no exit or emergence; but lost, rather as the river of Egypt is said to lose itself in the sands, to reappear when it joins the ocean. That river, hidden for a time, will emerge living and life-giving on the shores of the illimitable sea, to lose and merge its waters in the Eternal Ocean of divine love. Eor, to repeat a verse oft quoted in previous pages — but which is specially appropriate here — it is “the Life hid with Christ in God; and when Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with Him in glory” (Col. iii. 3, 4). Separated: yes, but it is only as the disciples were separated from their dear Lord after the Resurrection. We all remember the night on the Sea of Tiberias; the thought of its unremunerated toil mingling with sadder, deeper, more sacred ponderings on His absence. But, as morning with its faint earliest ray dawns on the silvery beach, there stands a well-known Figure. There is heard a well-known Voice, welcoming them as “children” to the meal already prepared, — “It is the Lord!”
So with the believer and death with its night of tossing on the tempestuous waves. But, ere long, the darkness is past; and lo! on the Heavenly shore, there is a Voice heard inviting to sit down at the banquet of love; and, better than that on earthlylakeside, — a banquet with “no separation:” — “It is the Lord” for ever!
Death has somewhere been called one of the “gates of pearl” spoken of in Revelation. Not so, is it, assuredly, from the earthly view. No: there, it is rather a gloomy portal; stern, repulsive, iron-barred. But seen by angels, and the saintly multitude from “the other side,” — “Every several gate was of one pearl” (Rev. xxi. 21).
Let us seek to habituate ourselves to this view of death — “death in Christ.” An enemy truly, but ’ the last enemy.’ Then, in whatever shape it may overtake us; whether in the quiet slumber of our own chamber — a peaceful departure tended by the hands of loving affection; or the slow ravages of wasting disease, the wild delirium of raging fever, the crash of some sudden and unforeseen calamity, — we shall be able, like Paul, not, perhaps, as in his case, with a psean of triumph, but under the sublime consciousness of being in Christ, with simple confiding faith to say — “I am persuaded” that death... shall not “separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
“And so shall we ever he with the Lord!”
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