Charles Spurgeon Commentary Romans 8:35

"Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or anguish, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?" — Romans 8:35 (ASV)

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?

Quis separabit? That shall be our motto in every time of trial: who shall separate us from the love of Christ?

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?

They have all been tried. In different ages of the world, the saints have undergone all these, and yet never has one of them been taken away from the love of Christ. They have not ceased loving him, nor has he ceased loving them. They have been tried, I say.

Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?

Well, these things have been tried. As it is written, For thy sake we are killed all the day long. We are accounted as sheep for the slaughter. In Paul's day they were being hunted to the death, by thousands, and tens of thousands. Were they separated from Christ's love?

The enemy grew tired of persecution before the saints were wearied by it. You remember how, in the days of the Roman Empire, the Christians came to the judgment-seat and confessed Christ, even when they were not sought after, as if tempting their enemies to throw them to the lions or put them to death. They were destitute of all fear, and though Emperors were worse than brutes, these Christians defied them, outbraved them; vanquished them.

They could not put down the Christians.

Or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?

When they have been in famine or poverty, has Christ ever forsaken his saints? Ah, no! he has loved them all the more. Have any of these things separated us from our Savior? No; but they have, to our own consciousness, knitted us even more closely to our Divine Lord.

Cruel men have tried every form of persecuting the saints of God; they have been more inventive in the torments which they have applied to Christians than in almost anything else; yet no torture, no rack, no imprisonment, has ever divided them from Christ. They have clung to him still, after the manner of John Bunyan, who, when they said that he might go free if he would promise not to preach the gospel, said, "I will lie in prison until the moss grows on my eyelids rather than I will ever make such a promise as that. If you let me out of prison today, I will preach tomorrow, by the grace of God."

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?

They have been tried again and again.

Shall tribulation?

That has been tried. Have not the saints been beaten like wheat upon the threshing-floor? Has not addiction been to them a stern test of the reality of their faith? But Christ has loved them none the less for all the suffering that he has permitted to fall upon them.

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?

These have been tried on the saints for ages.

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?

What a long list of ills! They seem to make up a Jeremiah's roll of sorrow. Can they separate us from the love of Christ? They have all been tried; have they ever succeeded?