The enemies came, the Israelites suffered, and it seemed as if God had abandoned His chosen people. They were like Erik Weihenmayer on Mount Everest—blind travelers going through a terrible storm and unable to see what lay ahead. Yet they were still held firmly by the unbreakable rope.

Where do we get the idea that God has promised us an easy ride through life? Not from Scripture; it’s not there. Loving parents never promise their children a problem-free life. Instead, they say, “We will always be here for you, we will always offer all we have to help you, and we will always love you—even if you disappoint us, even if you walk away from us, even if you don’t return our love.” Such is the love of God.

John Stott writes, “Christian people are not guaranteed immunity to temptation, tribulation or tragedy, but we are promised victory over them. God’s pledge is not that suffering will never afflict us, but that it will never separate us from his love.”3

What Can Separate Us from God’s Love?

In Romans 8:35, Paul emphatically affirmed that none of the personal crises he had experienced affected the constancy of God’s love. But Paul doesn’t stop there. He continues on, showing us that the personal troubles we all encounter are just the tip of the iceberg. In verses 38–39 he gives us a second list that opens the window to another level of obstacles, many of them great, cosmic, universal powers so enormous that Christians could easily fear them as threats to God’s love.

In addressing this second list, Paul expresses his complete confidence in the love of God in one of the most profound and eloquent statements of faith in the entire Bible:

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 created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

—ROMANS 8:38–39

What a grand, powerful, lofty, and moving passage! It can give you a chill to read it. We sense that Paul is challenging the limits of his vocabulary, his educated philosophy, and his considerable powers of literary expression to show us that no threat, regardless of how great and imposing, is greater than the love of God.

Paul gives us five pairs of contrasting forces that may challenge us. The big idea is that you can go from one end of any spectrum to the other—from life to death, from things present to things to come—without going beyond the scope of God’s love.