The Inseparability of Believers from God's Love Through Christ

What can we say in response? If God stands with us, who can stand against us? He who did not withhold his own Son but delivered him for our sake—how could he fail to lavish upon us, together with him, every good thing? This is a recapitulation, a return to what has gone before, and he speaks not in defiance of what is plainly evident. I have seen, moreover, how all things rise against us for the sake of that name—people, yes, but also the very forces that oppose: principalities, powers, world-rulers of this dark age, and the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly realms, with Satan himself bent on our overthrow. Yet we must not claim, contrary to what is evident, that if God is for us, then his cause is insignificant and we are nothing, or that our adversaries are powerless; to think so would be to invite fear and distress, as if we were left alone to contend with such foes. But now that God is for us, what measure can be taken against this array of opposition? To what shall they be compared—if not to nothing? Who will bring a charge against God’s chosen? God himself, who justifies. Who is there to condemn? It seems clear that this points to the devil, the accuser of the brethren, who charges the elect before God—yet there is not one he accuses who is not also defended, save only Jesus, who knew no sin. And so it is said: the ruler of this world comes, and finds in me nothing to lay hold of. Thus he is brought to nothing by his own accusations against God’s elect, for if God justifies, who can condemn? Even if the accuser produces the very things for which they were once condemned—if they had not been left behind—still, God has justified them: as a cloud sweeps away their iniquities, as darkness is scattered before light, as those once stained by sin are made white like refined zinc. Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For the victor in a contest is not merely the one who, after struggle, overtakes his opponent, but the one who does not even allow the beginning of resistance to take shape. Such was Paul, and such are those who have undergone the same preparation against temptation: they trample oppression, find joy in the one who straitens, pursue the hunter by endurance, laugh at famine through heavenly food, regard nakedness as nothing, having put on Christ through whom they are clothed, treat danger as no danger, and wield the sword not by strength but by the living word of God, which they find easy to wield, being persuaded. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, 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 in Christ Jesus our Lord. Consider whether it is not reasonable that I am convinced of this—having appointed these things to be weighed against greater realities, or measured by human trials—and that the very thing that would separate us is nothing but the esteeming of the lesser exercises of the human soul over the greater. And if we more than conquer the former and the human, we shall not lack a better breath and energy surrounding them; thus it was fitting that Paul added the words 'through him who loved us.' But reflect: if death indeed sought to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord, it would not be the common fate of which it was said above—that we die wholly each day—but rather the enemy of Christ, who has been destroyed. For this one would seek to divide us, to speak, Paul—but he shall not be destroyed by the one in whom he dwells, Christ. And life is not contrary to this death, for mutually opposed things do not naturally desire the same end; rather, the way of life through sin, its appearances, and falsehood is what opposes it. But if even for each kind of sin there is some base form of life, you will know this through the superior mercy that extends over life. For this one would seek to separate the one embraced in the love of God in Christ Jesus—but she cannot, being destroyed in part by the death through which one dies on account of sin, and in part by our life, which is hidden in Christ in God. And the angels, too, seek to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord, concerning whom it has been said to those on the left: 'Depart, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.' And the thing that neither rulers nor what is in us—the old blood and barrier—can effect, but which, before the rulers and the things that follow, is referred back.