Romans 8:35

Romans 8:35. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Christ's love to us, rather than our love to Him, or even our sense of His love to us. Still the separation.must refer to possible hindrances in its gracious effects upon us; hence the separation would include a failure to feel His love to us. If we connect the question with Romans 8:34, we may paraphrase thus: ‘Christ Jesus is the very one who died to atone for our sins; yes, more than this, He is the one who was raised from the dead for our justification (chap. Romans 4:25); it is He who sits at the place of power lovingly ruling the world for our sake; He it is who is pleading on our behalf; how then can any one, or anything, separate us from His love?' The questions which follow suggest what might seem to threaten such separation.

Tribulation, or anguish, as in chap. Romans 2:9; the former referring to outward trial, the latter to the inward sense of it. ‘First of all believers are pressed into anxiety by the world. Then there comes persecution itself, which drives them out to famine and nakedness; the end is peril, the danger of death, and sword, death itself' (Lange). There seems to some such climax. In those days these very things threatened; in our day the dangers are different, but none the less real and quite as often disturbing our sense of Christ's love to us.