Romans 8:38-39 – The Eternal Love of God
Kody Alvarez
I believe one of the greatest misconceptions is that God is against us. Sometimes, people feel undeserving of God’s goodness because of mistakes they’ve made or even the subtle voice of the enemy. However, scripture tells us in Romans 8:31 that God is for you.
If God is for us, who can be against us? – Romans 8:31
When we think about God being for us, maybe we think about it in terms of the way we are “for” our favorite sports team but God’s love is not like this. Our love for our favorite sports team goes up and down based on whether the team is winning or losing, but God’s love is not based on our performance. God is for us because God is love (1 John 4:16). His love is endless and engulfing. God made you to love you and to be with you.
“Christ is love covered over with flesh.” – Thomas Goodwin.
God’s love is different from anything we can comprehend or understand. God’s love isn’t cautious, calculated or calloused. When we love, we want to protect ourselves from being injured. God was willing to be injured for our benefit. That’s how God loves us. God poured out the treasury of Heaven in giving us His son to pay our debt. There’s nothing greater in Heaven than Jesus, and God delivered Him deliberately to the cross so He could have intimacy with us.
There was a time when I planned a Disney trip with my family. We had to pay for parking, get on a flight and go to California. When we got to California, I didn’t expect to pay so much for tolls. When the toll attendant told me the price, I was shocked, but my wife nudged me to “pay the man”. She was instantly willing to hand over the ridiculously high toll price and so was I. Why? Because the price had already been paid. We’d already invested so much that at that point, we weren’t going to allow anything to stop us from getting that princess photo in front of the princess castle.
Nothing can separate us from the love of God. God is going to finish what He started. He initiated it and He’s going to finish it. He went so far, He didn’t even spare His son. If you ever doubt that God is for you, you don’t have to look any further than the cross. If God wouldn’t spare His only son for you, He certainly will take care of you. According to Romans 8:28, God works all things together for the good for them that love him.
A Lamborghini may not be good for you, but suffering might be. Paul shares that situational suffering won’t separate you from God’s love. If you need proof that God still loves you, focus on the cross, not your situation.
There are two questions that Paul shares that cause us to reflect on God’s love:
- Who can make any charges against us? God sees us with the same righteousness as Jesus Christ when we accept His sacrifice.
- Who can condemn us? Who can say God’s people are guilty? God won’t say we’re guilty because He’s already justified us. No new charges can be brought against us, because Jesus died for us once and for all.
We’ve been delivered so we could have a relationship with God now and in the next life. On top of paying our debt, taking our condemnation, Jesus prays and pleads for us.
Romans 8:26-27 26 In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans. 27 And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God’s people in accordance with the will of God.
The prayer ministry of the Trinity is beautiful. When we don’t know how to pray or what to pray for – the Holy Spirit is crying out to the Father for us.
God is pleading with His children for us to interact with Him and to have relationship and intimacy with Him in prayer. Prayer is how you will get to know God. God gives us all the tools we need to have an intimate, abiding life in Jesus Christ. Throughout the life of Jesus, we see that He had a strong prayer life. The only thing that keeps us from intimacy with God is our unwillingness to get alone and be silent. Until you get alone with God, you won’t know Him any deeper than a casual relationship.
If you want joy, everything you need comes from being connected to Him. God is the Source. He is the Sun and we revolve around Him. God has moved heaven and earth to have a relationship and reveal Himself to you. So we need to move from fitting God into our day to centering our day around God. This is living a life connected to the source. Do you want to live a life of joy? Be connected to God daily. Do you want to be free from anxiety, stress and depression? Connect to God daily. When we are connected to Jesus, we will bear fruit in the lives around us.
Nothing can separate us from God’s love.
Suffering doesn’t mean that God doesn’t love us. Suffering doesn’t mean that God is not on our side. Jesus and the apostles all suffered great afflictions for the gospel of Jesus Christ. When metal is forged, it is placed in the fire. When God is shaping us into the image of Christ, we are crushed by the hand of suffering. We learn that there’s nowhere to go, but God and we learn dependency. We are molded into the image of Christ. We learn that the power of this present age cannot separate us from the love of God.
Once you believe in Christ, nothing can separate you from God’s love. His love is more expansive than every power in heaven and in earth. If you died separated from God, you’d be separated from God for eternity. The God of all creation sacrificed His life so you could be saved and have a relationship with Him. The only condition to all these promises is that we acknowledge Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior.