Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2492
“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 ofGod which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Romans 8:38,39.
A CHRISTIAN Brother was asked, one day, “To what persuasion do you belong?” He parried the question at first, for he did not think that it was very important for him to answer it. So the enquirer asked him again, “But what is your persuasion?” “Well,” he said, “if you must know my persuasion, this is it, ‘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 created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.’” I also am of that persuasion. Somebody says, “That is Calvinistic doctrine.” If you like to call it so, you may, but I would rather that you made the mistake of the good old Christian woman who did not know much about these things and who said that she herself was “a high Calvaristt” She liked “high Calvary” preaching and so do I. And it is “high Calvary” doctrine that I find in this passage. He who hung on high Calvary was such a lover of the souls of men that from that glorious fact I am brought to this blessed persuasion, “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 created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Paul was fully persuaded of this great Truth of God. Did he not learn it by Revelation? I doubt not that God at first supernaturally revealed it to him, but yet, in order that he might be still more sure of it, God was pleased to reveal it to him again and again, till his trembling heart was more and more completely persuaded of it. It may have seemed to him, as it does to some of us, to be almost too good to be true and, therefore, the Holy Spirit so shed abroad this Truth in the Apostle’s mind that he yielded to it and said, “I am persuaded.” He may have thought, with a great many in the present day, that it was necessary to caution Believers against falling from Grace, and to be a little dubious about their final perseverance in the ways of God, but, if he ever had such fears, he gave them up and said, “I am—yes, I am persuaded that nothing can separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Beside that, I suppose that the Apostle was persuaded through reasoning with himself from other grand Truths of God. He said to himself, “If, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by His life.” He argued that if the death of Christ reconciled God’s enemies to Himself, the life of Christ will certainly preserve safely those who are the friends of God! That was good argument, was it not?
I have no doubt that Paul also argued with himself from the nature of the work of Grace which is the implantation of a living and incorruptible seed which lives and abides forever. Christ spoke of it as the putting of a well into us and He said, “The water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life.” And as Paul thought of the nature of this new life, he felt persuaded that it would not die—he was convinced that he would never be separated from the love of God!
Moreover, I doubt not that Paul remembered the doctrine of the Union of Believers with Christ, and he said to himself, “Shall Christ lose the members of His body? Shall a foot or an arm be lopped off from Him? Shall an eye of Christ be put out in darkness?” And he could not think that it could be so! As he turned the matter over mentally, he said, “If they are, indeed, one with Christ, I am persuaded that nothing can separate them from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Now, dear Brothers and Sisters, if I could extend the time for this service to 24 hours, I might give you all the arguments, or the most of the arguments, which support the blessed Truth of the non-separation of Believers from the love of Christ. As for my own convictions, I can never doubt it! I am fully persuaded concerning it. This Truth seems to me to have struck its roots into all the other Truths of Scripture and to have twisted itself among the granite rocks which are the very foundation of our hope! I, too, am persuaded by a thousand arguments, and persuaded beyond all question, that nothing shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord!
Yet more, I fancy that Paul had been persuaded of this Truth by his own experience. He had endured persecution, imprisonment, famine, shipwreck. He had suffered from scorn and scandal, pain of body and depression of spirit. “A night and a day,” he said, “I have been in the deep.” And I will guarantee you that many a night and many a day he had been in spiritual’deeps, yet he had survived them all and he could testify to the faithfulness of his God and say at the end, as the issue of his sufferings, “I am persuaded that nothing in creation is able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”