Nothing Can Separate Us

In one paragraph

This message came from Romans 8:28-39, with Pastor Ray walking through Paul's argument that nothing in creation can separate believers from the love of God in Christ. He preached it out of personal grief, naming that he is leaning on these verses right now, not just explaining them from a distance. Romans 8 does not arrive in a vacuum. Paul has spent seven-plus chapters establishing that humanity...

Read together

1. Romans 1:16 Paul's statement that he is not ashamed of the gospel, the power of God unto salvation for everyone who believes
2. Romans 1:18 start of God's general indictment of humanity, specifically the Gentiles
3. Romans 3:10 verdict that there is no one righteous, no not one, no one who seeks after God
4. Romans 3:23 all have fallen short of the glory of God
5. Romans 3-4 justification by faith spelled out and illustrated with Abraham and David
6. Romans 4 Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness
7. Romans 6 know that you died with Christ, reckon it as true, yield to righteousness
8. Romans 7 Paul's description of conflict with indwelling sin, doing what he does not want to do, wretched man that I am
9. Romans 8:1 there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus
10. Romans 8:28 God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God and are called according to his purpose
11. Romans 8:29 those he foreknew he predestined to be conformed to the image of his son
12. Romans 8:30 those predestined he called, those called he justified, those justified he glorified
13. Romans 8:31 if God is for us who can be against us
14. Romans 8:32 he who did not spare his own son will freely give us all things with Christ
15. Romans 8:33 who will bring a charge against God's elect, God is the one who justifies
16. Romans 8:34 Christ Jesus who died and was raised intercedes for us at the right hand of God
17. Romans 8:35 listing tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, peril, sword as things that cannot separate us from the love of Christ
18. Romans 8:36 quotation of Psalm 44 line, for your sake we are killed all day long, counted as sheep for the slaughter
19. Romans 8:37 in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through him who loved us
20. Romans 8:38-39 Paul's conviction that neither death nor life nor angels nor principalities nor any created thing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus
21. Psalm 44 read in full as the source of the sheep for the slaughter quotation Paul used in Romans 8:36

Talk about it

1. Pastor Ray said that both Calvinists and Arminians claim Romans 8:28 as their ground, and that God is sovereign and we are responsible. Where do you find yourself getting stuck on that tension, and what helps you hold both truths at the same time?
2. Pastor Ray talked about God's purpose in predestination being to conform us into the image of his Son, and he drew a parallel to the hard things Israel went through in the minor prophets as God chipping away what was worldly. Can you think of a time when something difficult turned out to be God doing that kind of work in you?
3. Pastor Ray shared that he is grieving right now and that Romans 8:28 is what he is personally holding on to. What verse or passage have you found yourself clinging to in a season of grief or hardship, and why that one?
4. Psalm 44 ends with a plea for God to act, not because the people deserve it but for his mercy's sake. Pastor Ray said that last line gave him hope for the rest of the psalm. How does asking God on the basis of his mercy rather than your own record change the way you pray when things are hard?
5. Pastor Ray listed things Paul says cannot separate us from the love of Christ, including death, life, angels, principalities, things present, and things to come. Which item on that list is hardest for you to actually believe right now, and what makes it hard?