What then are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who is against us? Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will affliction or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or peril or sword? No, in all these things we are more than victorious 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 (Romans 8:31, 34, 37-39).
The title of this post is my conceptual translation of Romans 8:39. Paul does not flippantly dismiss suffering and pain in this life, nor does he callously reject the power that the enemies of the gospel wield, whether individual or corporate. If Paul were here today, no one would ever hear him singing that oldie, “Don’t worry be happy.” The evil in life and the brokenness that accompanies it are serious; so much so that as Paul tells the Romans, God did not spare his own Son since that is what it took to offer deliverance to us.
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