What does it mean that neither height nor depth separates us from the love of God (Romans 8:39)?

Can death? It was in that very thing it was expressed in all its greatness. Can life? Love is the very thing that has quickened me into life, and I have found that all life is in the love of God. Outside the love of God lie death and corruption. Can angels? They are but the servants of that love sent forth to minister to those who are the objects of it. Can principalities or powers? They learn in the kindness of God to us the power of that love that picked us up from the pit of destruction and gave as to have part with Christ above every position that they are privileged to occupy. Can things present? These all work for good to them that love God. Can things to come? These things will all be according to God, where He will rest in His love and where we will be displayed in Christ’s glory in such a way that all will know that God has loved us as He has loved His Son. Can height? It is in the height of heaven we know it best. Can depth? Nothing can be deeper than the judgment under which we lay, and love reached us there and removed the judgment from us. Can any other creature? No, because it is only a creature, and the love in which we boast is the love of the Creator Himself.

Yes; but it is about us all, for he says nothing shall separate “us”—not “me.” It takes all in The next thing is “life.” Life cannot separate, for Christ Jesus our Lord is now in life and God’s love is in Him. Nor “angels, nor principalities, nor powers”—none of these things can separate us, for Christ is exalted above and over all—“nor things present, nor things to come, nor height”—“for the love of God in Christ is in the height nor depth”—Christ has been into the depths. Whichever way you look, there is not a single thing that exists now, or ever shall, that can separate us from the love of God. Look into death—God’s love has been there! Look at life—God’s love is there! Look at all the vast range of angels, principalities, and powers—the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord is above all! Look at the present things, look at the future things, look up into the height, look down into the depth, the love of God is beyond, above, and has been in Christ beneath all! Look at any other creature, if there is another anywhere to be found—still the Word says, “Nor any other creature shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord!”

The answer is that none of these shall for one moment separate us from the love of God. That love rests on us in Christ Jesus our Lord. He is the worthy and all-glorious Object of that love, and we are in it because connected with Him. The love reached us in Him, and we, as now in Him, stand abidingly in that love. If Christ can be removed out of the embrace of that love, we can be. If He cannot be, neither can we. Once grasp that great fact and Paul's persuasion becomes our persuasion. Nothing can separate us, for which eternal praise be to our God!

Now the apostle says, "I am persuaded." He does not say the Romans were persuaded. It is our privilege to be persuaded as He was, but he does not say we are. He singles himself out three times in this epistle in this way, once in the second verse, where he says that the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus had made him free from the law of sin and death. This is so experimental that every one must speak for himself. Then again in verse 18 he says, "1 reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory "that shall be revealed in us." It is not every believer who reckons in this way. We surely ought to reckon as he did. And now again for the third time he has to say something of the way in which he views things, and he is persuaded that nothing is able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. He was personally persuaded, but he was as fully persuaded about the Romans as about himself. Death, life, angels, principalities, powers, are more spiritual foes and more terrible to meet than those in verse 35; but they cannot separate us from the love of God. Death cannot separate us from the love of God, it is in death the love of God has been expressed to us; it is the witness of the love of God to us. Life cannot separate us from it, for the love of God is the life in which we live and shall live for ever. Angels cannot separate us, for they are appointed in the love of God to minister to us in our journey through an evil world. And they are greatly interested in the grace that has come to us in Christ. And as to evil angels they are powerless to hurt us. Neither can height nor depth rob us of that love. It has been expressed in Christ, and it has found its resting-place in Him, and God has brought us to Himself in the One in whom it rests, and therefore we are persuaded there can be no separation from it. If there is no separation from the love of God for Christ, there is none for us, for it is in Him that that love is ours.

Rom. 8:38-39. Paul, in terminating this unfolding of the Christian condition, names the strongest things which could dare to rise up against the saints, and only sees in them powerless obstacles in presence of the love that God has shown us in Jesus Christ. This eighth chapter, as it has been expressed, sets out by saying "no condemnation," and ends by adding "no separation."

The result of all for the soul is, that God is for us. Sweet and glorious conclusion, which gives the heart a peace that is ineffable, and rest that depends on the power and stability of God — a rest that shuts out all anxiety as to anything that could trouble it; for if God be for us who can be against us? And the way of it shuts out all thought as to any limit to the liberality of God. He who had given His Son, how should He not with Him give us all things? Moreover, with regard to our righteousness before God, or to charges which might be brought against the saints, as well as with regard to all the difficulties of the way, God Himself has justified: who shall condemn? Christ has died, He has risen, and is at the right hand of God, and intercedes for us: who shall separate us from His love? The enemies? He has already conquered them. Height? He is there for us. Depth? He has been there; it is the proof of His love. Difficulties? We are more than conquerors: they are the immediate occasion of the display of His love and faithfulness, making us feel where our portion is, what our strength is. Trial does but assure the heart, which knows His love, that nothing can separate us from the love of God which is in Jesus. Everything else is the creature, and cannot separate us from the love of God — a love of God, which has entered also into this misery of the creature, and gained the victory for us over all. Thus the deliverance, and liberty, and security of the saints by grace and power are fully brought out.

We have been occupied with the first verse of Romans 8. Now look at the two verses at the end of the same chapter. The apostle says, “I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” The love of God came into this world in the person of Christ, and came to light in all its power in His cross, and now rests in Him in resurrection, and that is where God has placed the believer, in Christ there is no condemnation, but that is what there is not there. What is there then? You are there, and the love of God is there, and you are both there together. Do you think that Christ can ever be separated from the love of God? Oh no, you say; that would be impossible. But do you not see that if you are in Christ, where the love of God is, He would have to be separated from that love before you could? Perhaps you are saying to yourself, in the language of the doubting soul, “Oft it gives me anxious thought: Do I love my Lord, or no? am I His? or am I not?” But for the moment I do not want you to trouble yourself about your love to Him, I want you to occupy yourself with His love to you. As I have said, He has placed you in Christ, where His love has found its everlasting dwelling-place, and you are to sit down in His presence with a thankful heart, and bask in the sunshine of that love.

From this love there is no separation. Once it is believed—once it gets into the heart in the power of the Spirit—it is there for ever. The Apostle says, “I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom. 8:38-39). In the first verse of this chapter we are in Christ, and in the last verse the love of God is there, so that where the love of God has got its eternal resting-place, we have got ours through grace; therefore, until Christ can be separated from that love we never can be; and as nothing can separate Him from it, nothing can separate us.

Nothing, then, can separate us from the love of Christ. For of all that is against us, there is nothing which is not His creature, and as such, the servant of His love to usward who believe. All thus work for good, and not for evil, though the intent of the enemy who uses creature power against the truth be not so. No attribute of God can cross this love; for already He has glorified all His attributes in binding us to Himself in Christ. No species of trial can separate us; for it is God who in the trial proves His own work, that it may be for praise, and honour, and glory, in the day of salvation and of rest (1 Peter 1:7). Life may not do this; for already we are dead with Christ. Death cannot do it; for already we are alive in Christ from the dead. Neither angels nor principalities nor powers, can reach for harm the place of the believer who already is exalted in Christ, and made to sit with Him above the heavens. Present things may not separate, though fear may be on every side; for the power of God is already known in victory, and His sustaining presence as the God of all comfort is sweetly witnessed by His Spirit in the heart (1 Cor. 15:57; and 2 Cor. 1:3-4). Things to come, instead of separating, shall by their advent bring yet nearer the hour of our hope; for the day of nature's dread, the day of judgment, has no fear for those whose boldness in that day is, that they are already one with Him who is the Judge (1 John 4:17). Height or depth are equally vain to obstruct the energy of a love which has already measured all heights and sounded all depths in the effectual operation of redeeming grace (Eph. 4:8-10). And is there any other creature which might lift itself in anger against the peace of God's beloved? The Spirit of God finds none. Having filled the blessed vessel of God's choice with the pure knowledge of Divine love, as witnessed in the Father's unspeakable gift, persuasion of eternal exemption from all ill becomes the necessary effect of our being thus beloved.

If, in this precious chapter, we have the security of the hand of God the Son and of God the Father, we have also, in the eighth of Romans, our inseparability from the love of Christ and the love of God. This is, perhaps, even more blessed. The challenge is made: “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?” And the answer is given, in the deep heart-persuasion of the Apostle, writing by the Spirit: “I am persuaded that”—and then in thought, sweeping through the wide range of all hostile powers from the highest heights to the lowest depths; from death with its sting to life and its snares; from the wiles of the Serpent to the hidden and unseen energy of opposing principalities and powers; from the terrorizing influence of things seen to the unknown possibilities of things unseen; and, finally, summing up every imaginable adversary, he says: “nor any other creature shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” The love of God finds its anchorage, not in the feeble faith of His people, but “in Christ Jesus our Lord.” No storm can drag the anchor thence. It is assured for ever more.