Inseparable, Unconquerable Love: Romans 8.31-39

Over the last three posts, we’ve looked at a beautiful text in which Paul reminds his readers that they are not alone in their suffering in this age: the whole creation and the Holy Spirit too are groaning along with them waiting for the new creation to be born—and born it will be, because it’s been in God’s plans from all eternity. Today all that comes to a rousing crescendo, as Paul brings this section and the first half of a book to a powerful end.

Text

[31] What then shall we say about all this? If God is on our side, who can oppose us? [32] For the one who did not spare his own Son but handed him over for all of our sake — how will he not also graciously give us everything else with him? [33] Who could make an accusation against God’s chosen ones? The God who already justified them! [34] And who could condemn them? Christ who died, or rather, who was raised, who is also at the right hand of God, who is interceding for us! [35] And who could separate us from the love of Christ? Could it be affliction or distress or harassment or famine or nakedness or danger or the sword? [36] (For as it is written: “For Your sake we are being killed all day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.”) [37] No. In all all these things, we are beyond victorious through the one who loved us. [38] For I am convinced that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things of the present nor things that will be, nor powers [39] nor height nor depth, nor anything else in creation will be able to separate us from the love of God that is our Lord Jesus Christ.

Experience

This is one of those passages where the full power of ancient rhetoric is on full display. Who wouldn’t want get on board with this theological train! In terms of things I noticed, I’m intrigued by the movement in the passage as it builds from all-too-human difficulties in the first half (8.35) to very apocalyptic-sounding spiritual warfare in the second (8.38f).

Encounter

Here Paul ‘introduces’ us to Christ’s all-powerful, undefeatable love. Love hasn’t been a major theme in Romans, at least not overtly, but here it’s front and centre. And it’s pretty impressive. Paul claims here than no power in all of creation, no matter how evil or frightening, can separate us from it or defeat it.

Explore

While I think the point Paul is making here is pretty clear, a few questions deserve to be explored a bit more:

• What literary categories of genre, style, and rhetoric might help inform our interpretation?
• How does this piece fit into the larger argument of Romans?
• Is there anything the particular lists of dangers Paul mentions can tell us about what he’s trying to say?

Romans 8.31-39 within Romans

Romans 8.31-39 is the end of the first half of the letter. This isn’t just true thematically, as it brings to an end the main line of argumentation Paul has been making since 1.18, but also literally; as Eberhart notes, there are 216 verses before this passage and 218 after it. In bringing the first half of the letter to a close, it serves as a conclusion to several pieces at once: It concludes chapter 8, with its powerful conclusions about life ‘in Christ’; it concludes chapters 5-8, with its contrast between the life ‘in Adam’ and life ‘in Christ’; and it concludes the whole argument since 1.18, with its point that God has made a way for all of us, no matter our religious, cultural, or socioeconomic background, to be united with each other and with God (Witherington 220).* It’s therefore doing a lot of heavy lifting.

But as rousing and as powerful as these verses are, it would be wrong to call them the “climax” of the book as a whole, as some have done. The book still has eight chapters to go, and it would be a disservice to Paul to act as though they aren’t critical to his message for the Christians in Rome (Witherington 220).

In Roman rhetorical terms, this section functions as the peroratio, a section which capped off an argument by moving the audience with an emotionally-charged and -resonant style leading them to accept the argument that’s been made (Kruse 359).

Rhetoric and Style

Paul accomplishes this in a few ways. First, the ‘question and answer’ format lends itself to a quasi-liturgical, call-and-response reception (Tonstad 259f; Eberhart; Witherington 221). Eberhart also points out that the two lists of dangers use symbolic numbers of seven and ten items respectively.

These questions imagine a kind of apocalyptic court of law:

• If everything he’s just said about being on our side, as evidenced by the incarnation and passion of Jesus, is true, who could possibly oppose us? The answer is no one.
• And who could bring an accusation against us? One might expect — especially considering where this passage goes — a reference to the devil here. For both the name ‘Satan’ and term ‘devil’ mean ‘accuser’; bringing accusations against us is what the devil does in this schema (Kruse 361). But Paul doesn’t go there: Satan has no say in this court of law. The only one with the right to bring an accusation against us is God, and God has already acted to make sure any accusation would be met with a ‘not guilty’ verdict.
• Who could condemn us? The only judge is Jesus, who is our advocate and intercessor — that is, our own defense attorney is the judge making the decision.

Any finally, done with the legal metaphor, he asks who or what could separate us from Christ’s love. Again, the immediate context is one of sufferings and troubles (8.18). So the question isn’t whether bad things will happen to us — they will, inevitably, especially the more we participate in Christ’s peaceable ways. The question is if these troubles can separate us from Christ’s love, that is, whether they are evidence that we have been forsaken. The answer is a resounding no. These present difficulties are nothing compared to the victory we have in Christ. Nothing, even the worst kinds of spiritual warfare, can separate us from Christ. For those of us who are ‘in Christ’, there is a general ‘pro-existence’ to the universe, that is it is all ‘for’ us, even and especially when it doesn’t seem that way from all appearances (Eberhart).

While this is an “epic hymn of victory” (Eberhart), it is also unquestionably “trash talk” (Gaventa). Paul is convinced that the powers of evil have absolutely no power over us.

A Dangerous World

Once again we see the ‘now but not yet’ orientation of Paul’s theology. The world is still not as it should be, and so we will experience all kinds of evil; yet that evil has no power to touch us ‘where it counts’.

In the first half of the passage he’s talking about very down to earth realities: everyday suffering, persecution, and physical violence (the reference to ‘the sword’ suggests he has violence by the state in mind). In the second, he takes a more apocalyptic approach, peering behind the veil to see the spiritual forces at work behind the scenes of those physical realities. This is the meaning of words like ‘angels’, ‘powers’, and ‘rulers’ here: these are cosmic forces that in first-century cosmology were understood to govern or influence our earthly experiences (SBL; Eberhart; Kruse 362f)

But Paul’s point remains: the world may be a dangerous and unfriendly place, but we are ultimately safe in Christ’s love.

Challenge

All this talk of spiritual warfare, one might be uncomfortable in one of two directions. On the one hand, those working from a more contemporary worldview might wonder whether this language is meaningful in a scientific world. And on the other, they might wonder if passages like this might lead some Christians to put more stock than is warranted on the idea of spiritual warfare. Let’s quickly look at each question in turn.

Spiritual Powers

Whether we think of them as being personified or simply as forces in the universe, I’m convinced that the kind of language Paul uses here is not only helpful, but necessary in explaining our world. As I’ve previously noted about this:

But in speaking of the Kingdom of God, Jesus takes it one step further: the problem is with the way the world as we know it works. Left to our own devices we will always end up oppressing ourselves or each other. Politics will always let us down. Beautiful ideologies will be corrupted. High-minded revolutions will fall into tyranny. There is something powerful at work behind the scenes — Jesus called it “the ruler of this world” or “Satan,” the Accuser; Paul called it “the Principalities and Powers,” and we might call it social contagion or even shadow — that works to twist authority into authoritarianism, wealth into oppression, that makes the strong stronger at the expense of the weak.

Social contagion is a particularly helpful concept here. This refers to the spread of ideas, beliefs, neuroses, and feelings across a population. The classic example of this is the scapegoat mechanism, where somehow an entirely group will turn on someone — often formerly considered a friend and neighbour. But we can also see it in the growth of conspiracy theories, the spread of panic, mob violence, hoarding and so on. These phenomena seem to have a life of their own, which is why the ancients assigned them a kind of spiritual personhood and agency.

Whether we follow their lead or not, these forces of un-reason are still a reality in our world — as any look at the news of the day demonstrates.

Spiritual Warfare

But by personifying such powers, does Paul give them too much attention, and possibly cause some Christians to follow suit? At a basic level, yes. Passages like this are at the heart of a lot of the contemporary ‘spiritual warfare’ movement. But a bigger answer is that having a strong interest in or fear of such powers is completely the opposite of Paul’s point here and elsewhere. His consistent point in bringing these powers up is that they are defeated and we don’t need to worry about them. So, paying them excessive attention and especially engaging in proactive ‘warfare’ against them is a gross adventure in missing the point. Where Paul uses the language of warfare, it’s with the assumption that they are assaulting us, not the other way around, and that we ultimately don’t need to be afraid of them because they’ve already lost.

Expand

This passage grows our faith simply by reminding us that we have nothing to fear. Confidence and trust in God is always expansive.

Summary & Conclusions

This passage brings the first half of Romans to a resounding and emotional conclusion, reminding the faithful that we have absolutely nothing to fear. We will experience trouble in this world, and it may be severe even to the point of death, but ultimately God has won the victory in Christ, and we participate in that victory as we participate in him.

 

* For full references, please see the series bibliography.