Nothing can separate believers from the love of God — so why does Scripture say we are “killed all day long”?
Colin Cook tackles one of the hardest questions in the Christian life: why God allows His people to suffer, and how His grace is revealed through weakness, pain and loss.
Listen now to FaithQuest Radio with Colin Cook.
Romans 8 contains some of the most triumphant promises in all of Scripture.
Nothing can separate us from the love of Christ.
Not tribulation.
Not distress.
Not persecution.
Not famine.
Not danger.
Not death itself.
And yet, right in the middle of that glorious passage, Paul inserts a verse that can
Now I said a couple of days ago that I was missing out on a, I’m going to miss a couple of verses and pass over them and then come back to them later. So later is now and we’ll take a look at these verses because they’re very interesting. They are couched in the middle of this enormously powerful passage, which I’ll read again for you. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or peril or the sword? Yet in all of these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For 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 created thing shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Awesome, wonderful, yes? But what did I miss out? Well, this is what I missed out. As it is written, For your sake, we are killed all day long. We are accounted as sheep for the slaughter. Now, for years, I didn’t see the importance of this passage. I didn’t see its meaning and its significance. So, like everybody else, when you don’t understand a bit of Scripture, unless you’re willing to search into it, you just elide it, right? You just walk over it and ignore it and move on to the passages that you understand. But there came the time when I thought, well, look, I need to understand that. What does it mean? For your sake, we are killed all day long. We are accounted as sheep for the slaughter. Now, let’s read the passage again, but not excluding these couple of verses. Actually, it’s only one verse, verse 36. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written, for your sake we are killed all day long. We are accounted as sheep for the slaughter. Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Christ who loved us. For I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities and 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, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. So what is that strange, odd verse doing, slap-dab in the middle of this awesome passage? Well, notice what it says. It’s a quotation, by the way, from the Old Testament, from Psalm 45, verse 22. Notice, first of all, it says, for your sake, for God’s sake, for the sake of Jesus Christ. In other words, something is going to happen which is for the benefit of Jesus Christ and the Father. What is that something? Well, it’s a shocker, isn’t it? For your sake, we are being killed. All day long we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter. Now you’re not going to like this. I know you’re not. I don’t like it either, but we just have to deal with what’s there and stop trying to interpret things or reinterpret things or gloss over things simply because we don’t like them when we would rather they fit into our own modern secular humanist paradigm. This verse is saying that the people of God, those people who are brought to his kingdom, those people who are led to trust in Jesus Christ for their salvation, those people who are led to know Jehovah, are in the earth for the purpose of allowing God to allow them to suffer. They are being killed all day long. They are being allowed to be counted as sheep for the slaughter. And in that process, the grace and the glory of God are being revealed through the power of grace to operate through pain and sorrow and tragedy. Let’s get it into a larger context. Remember what it says, What then shall we say to these things if God is for us, who can be against us? God is for the human race, and God is particularly for the people that he has brought to himself by faith in the atoning sacrifice of Christ. And so, since God is for us, and God is the only God, there are no competitors, Who can separate us from his love? There’s nobody. Satan can’t do it. Angels can’t do it. Principalities and powers can’t do it. Troubles, persecution and all the rest of it can’t do it. Nothing can separate us from God’s love. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or the sword? No, not at all. then what the heck is going on when Christians suffer? And this is what you don’t like. God’s glory is being revealed in their patient faith, in their praise to God under all circumstances, in their ability to lift up their hearts and thank God even when all the troubles are around them. God’s glory is being revealed through suffering. There you have it. Do you like it? No, you don’t. But are you willing to receive it and to accept it for your sake, for God’s sake? We are being killed, not literally always, of course, but in many parts of the world, yes. You’ve heard many times now that in the Middle East, the thousands, the hundreds of thousands of Christians that used to live there have either fled the persecution or been killed in the persecution. But for your sake, we are being killed every day in the troubles, our little hopes and joys, our expectations, our goals, our dreams. they are very often killed. Killed right in the midst of our hopes, right in the midst of our excitement of developing them. For what purpose? Because God wants to pummel us, knock us down, disappoint us? No, because God wants to reveal his grace and his glory through the evil that we experience so that he can show in time and eternity that evil does not win and that sorrow and tragedy and disappointment and loss do not have the upper hand. But God’s grace does. And so, we are called upon, I suppose, well, I don’t suppose, I know, obviously, based upon these verses, we are called upon to praise God under all circumstances. And don’t be in denial. Don’t try to pretend that you like it or you’re joyful in it emotionally. I mean, I’ve gone through a trial this week and do go through trials many times that are very stressful. So we acknowledge the stress that’s going on within us, and you probably heard it on my radio program, by the way, when I was appealing for help for Mark and Iomide in Nigeria. In the midst of the stress, we nevertheless lift our heart up and we praise. And we say, Father, I don’t know what in the world you’re doing, but I’m trusting you. This is very frightening to me, dear Lord. This is very perplexing and confusing. But I am trusting you and I praise you that you are bringing through these circumstances. your plan in my life. And I acknowledge, dear Lord, that the plans that I have set out may not be your plans, and I am willing to surrender my plans to yours. I am willing to let go of what I want so that your glory may be manifest because that’s what you want. Now, remember a certain passage in Scripture which is a bit of a surprise, really, when we think of Paul, the victorious one. He says in 2 Corinthians chapter 4, but we have this treasure, you know, the treasure of God’s truth. in earthen vessels. Who are the earthen vessels? Well, that’s us. We are just lumps of clay. We’re not super human beings. We’re just broken down pots that Jesus and the Holy Spirit and the Lord God are pouring their grace into. We… But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellence of the power may be of God and not of us. Oh boy, look at that slap in the face. The excellence of the power of this treasure within us does not come from our virtues, our morality, our super-spirituality, God forbid. We have this treasure in earthen vessels that the excellence of the power may be of God, not of us. In other words, people look at us and say, what a beautiful Christian that is. But how come he’s so beautiful? Because he’s really quite ugly. I know him personally, and he’s not very attractive in personality at all. So these people are not impressed by us as persons. They’re impressed by something that is going on in us that is from God, not from us. So Paul then goes on to say, we are hard pressed on every side, yet not crushed. We are perplexed, but not in despair. Persecuted, but not forsaken. Struck down, but not destroyed. Now think of it, this victorious, ebullient Christian Paul is hard pressed? Perplexed? Paul seems so certain about everything. And yet here he’s admitting that he’s very often perplexed by the will and the grace and the work of God. And he’s persecuted. Well, we knew that. And he was struck down. We knew that too. But the essence, I think, of this is that he was hard-pressed and perplexed. That’s what is often the experience of Christians. And it’s not because you’re on the wrong track. It’s not because you failed him or he’s become unfaithful to you. It’s because God is working something miraculous in you that is completely counterintuitive to everything you know. For your sake, for God’s sake, we are killed all day long. We are accounted as sheep for the slaughter. That’s what goes on in Christians while they are… affirming that in all of these things they are more than conquerors. In the midst of defeat, in the midst of perplexity, in the midst of persecution, in the midst of being struck down, we affirm that we are conquerors through his love. Stupid, isn’t it? Of course it is. Because Christian faith appears to the world and appears to our natural humanity and our logic to be stupid. If it doesn’t appear to be stupid, it’s probably because you’re being stupid and because you’re on the wrong track. Lift up your heart then, in the trouble, thank God for it, and say, Lord, I know you are bringing your glory through this, not my glory, and I’m bent on your glory, not mine. The other day, friends, I talked to you about the flooding in Akiti, Nigeria. I hope you looked it up on Google and saw some of the images and pictures. And I talked to you about Mark, my adopted, spiritually adopted son and grandson Ayumide, that we might help them because the waters flowed like a torrent through their house. All the foodstuffs and so many necessities were utterly destroyed. And so I look to you for help. And if you could send a donation, it would be very much appreciated. Do it online at faithquestradio.com or send it to faithquest, P.O. Box 366, Littleton, Colorado, 80160. Thank you so much. Reach out, would you, by faith, inspired by the Holy Spirit, to those who are so disadvantaged. Thank you so much. See you next time. Cheerio and God bless.
