“Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?”
Romans 8:35
God does not keep a man immune from trouble; He says – “I will be with
him in trouble.” It does not matter what actual troubles in the most extreme
form get hold of a man's life, not one of them can separate him from his
relationship to God. We are “more than conquerors in all these things.” Paul is
not talking of imaginary things, but of things that are desperately actual; and
he says we are super-victors in the midst of them, not by our ingenuity, or by
our courage, or by anything other than the fact that not one of them affects
our relationship to God in Jesus Christ. Rightly or wrongly, we are where we
are, exactly in the condition we are in. I am sorry for the Christian who has
not something in his circumstances he wishes was not there.
“Shall tribulation . . . ?” Tribulation is never a noble thing; but let
tribulation be what it may – exhausting, galling, fatiguing, it is not able to
separate us from the love of God. Never let cares or tribulations separate you
from the fact that God loves you.
“Shall anguish . . . ?” – can God's love hold when everything says that
His love is a lie, and that there is no such thing as justice?
“Shall famine . . . ?” – can we not only believe in the love of God but
be more than conquerors, even while we are being starved?
Either Jesus Christ is a deceiver and Paul is deluded, or some
extraordinary thing happens to a man who holds on to the love of God when the
odds are all against God's character. Logic is silenced in the face of every
one of these things. Only one thing can account for it – the love of God in
Christ Jesus. “Out of the wreck I rise” every time.
5月19日竭誠為主
.
