You cannot be separated from God’s love if you sincerely love him.
Separable
A few years ago my wife Nancy was sitting in our Sunday morning worship service when she glanced at her left hand and then did a double-take. The diamond on her wedding band was gone. She had a mild panic and began looking around, on her lap, the adjacent chair, the floor—no diamond. She began crying. When we got home, she searched our apartment. No diamond.
We never did find it and were deeply disappointed.
This is a picture of life. We lose things we love. We lose people we love. And the more that happens, and the more painful the losses, the easier it becomes to fear losing what we now have and love.
I will never forget the sudden emptiness in my soul when at age 18 I moved away to college three-months early, on Memorial Day weekend, in order to train with the gymnastics team for the summer. The house I moved into was virtually empty except for one or two other students because most everyone went home for the holiday weekend. I experienced homesickness for the first time, and the sense of pain and loss was sudden, acute, and took me completely by surprise. It really hurt.
Far greater still was the painful surprise 15 years later when my mother and father were in a car accident, and my mother died a few days afterward at age 62. That was the first time I experienced the death of an immediate family member, and it was a shock to my emotions. I grieved for months. I felt pain I had never felt before. At the funeral I remember vividly how difficult it was to believe that she was now separated from me in a way I could not overcome. I could not talk to her or be with her. We were truly separated, at least until we are reunited in heaven. This was not like going away to college and feeling homesick, for then I could write letters to my family, talk on the phone, and go home if I really wanted to go home. No, when my mother died, we were truly separated.
God’s inseparable love
These memories of loss and separation help me appreciate fully one more quality of God’s love. The Lord promises that if we will sincerely follow Jesus, nothing we experience can separate us from his love. Nothing.
In Romans 8, which many people regard as the greatest chapter in the Bible, Paul describes all the ways that God has graciously expressed his love and goodness toward us in Christ. Then he turns to the opposition that Christians face. In the Roman world at that time, following Christ could bring violent, government-sanctioned persecution. What’s more, serving Christ to spread the gospel, as Paul did, meant great hardship. In the face of all these troubles, did Paul feel as though he had somehow lost God’s love?
Far from it. Rather, he writes:
“ 35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? 36 As it is written, ‘For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.’ 37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38 For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, 39 nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8:35–39)
Nothing
Paul was not writing in rhetorical metaphors when he spoke of tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, danger, and sword. He had experienced each of these threats firsthand except for the sword—that would come later. But he was certain that none of these things could rob him of God’s love. Neither could death. Neither could supernatural beings like angels or demons or mighty spiritual powers in heavenly places. Neither could any other created thing that any person can face in any place, at any time then or now. They cannot separate us from God’s love. We can separate ourselves from God’s saving love, as Judas did, but nothing outside of us can do that to us.
Tenacious
So, we do not have to fear losing God’s love. His love for you is like the love Ruth pledged to her mother-in-law Naomi, only greater. When Naomi urged Ruth, now a widow, a Gentile, a Moabite, to return home to her family and people, Ruth responded: “Do not urge me to leave you or to return from following you. For where you go I will go, and where you lodge I will lodge. Your people shall be my people, and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there will I be buried. May the LORD do so to me and more also if anything but death parts me from you” (Ruth 1:16–17).
Ruth’s love was humanly tenacious. With none of the weaknesses of fallen humans, God’s love is divinely, perfectly tenacious. He promises to stand by you. You can count on it. No created thing can separate you from the Almighty Creator’s love.
Jesus said, “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand.” (John 10:27–29)
So, fear not; God’s love for you is far stronger and more tenacious than your love for him.
Our way and God’s way
Our way: We may stop loving others. We may run out of love. Due to our own fault, we may fall out with others; divorce others. Our love can be fickle and self-centered.
God’s way: God’s love is tenacious. His love never ends for those who sincerely love him. His love does finally come to an end for those who persist in rejecting him.