ris3n's Apologetics Codex

Passage

Romans 8.38-39

Book: Romans · ASV / WEB / KJV / YLT

Verse

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ASV:

"38. For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, 39. 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." (Romans 8:38-39, ASV)

WEB:

"38. For I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, 39. nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from God’s love, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." (Romans 8:38-39, WEB)

KJV:

"38. For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, 39. 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." (Romans 8:38-39, KJV)

YLT:

"38. for I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor messengers, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, 39. nor things about to be, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of god, that [is] in Christ Jesus our Lord." (Romans 8:38-39, YLT)

Immediate context (±2 verses)

ASV:

"36. Even as it is written, For thy sake we are killed all the day long; We were accounted as sheep for the slaughter. 37. Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us. 38. For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, 39. 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." (Romans 8:36-39, ASV)

WEB:

"36. Even as it is written, “For your sake we are killed all day long. We were accounted as sheep for the slaughter.” 37. No, in all these things, we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38. For I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, 39. nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from God’s love, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." (Romans 8:36-39, WEB)

KJV:

"36. As it is written, For thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter. 37. Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us. 38. For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, 39. 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." (Romans 8:36-39, KJV)

YLT:

"36. (according as it hath been written, 'For Thy sake we are put to death all the day long, we were reckoned as sheep of slaughter,') 37. but in all these we more than conquer, through him who loved us; 38. for I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor messengers, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, 39. nor things about to be, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of god, that [is] in Christ Jesus our Lord." (Romans 8:36-39, YLT)

Setting

  • Speaker: Paul the Apostle, in his magnum opus letter to the Roman Christian community
  • Audience: Roman Christians (Jewish + Gentile mixed congregation, predominantly Gentile)
  • Location: composed in Corinth (during Paul's third missionary journey, between AD 56-58); addressed to Rome
  • Time period: composed c. AD 57 by Paul (with Tertius as amanuensis, Rom 16:22)
  • Narrative context: the doxological climax of Romans 8, and arguably of the entire epistle's soteriological argument. Romans 8 has moved through: no condemnation in Christ (vv. 1-4); the Spirit-vs-flesh contrast (vv. 5-13); adoption as sons (vv. 14-17); creation-and-believer's groaning toward glory (vv. 18-25); the Spirit's intercession (vv. 26-27); the golden-chain of salvation (vv. 28-30); the no-charge-against-the-elect courtroom (vv. 31-34); the no-separation list culminating in vv. 38-39. The verses are Paul's most rhetorically powerful expression of unconditional security of the believer in Christ's love. The catalog of would-be separators is comprehensive (death, life, angels, principalities, powers, time, space, any created thing), and the conclusion is absolute: nothing can separate.

Theological reading

Romans 8:38-39 is the single most rhetorically powerful expression of the security-of-the-believer in the entire NT. Paul's conviction ("For I am persuaded", Greek pepeismai, perfect-passive: settled, irreversible conviction) is that nothing in creation can separate the believer from the love of God in Christ. The verses' force depends on the completeness of the list (eight pairs / categories of would-be separators) and on the grounding of the security (the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord, not in the believer's own steadfastness).

The eight categories

Paul lists ten items in four pairs and two stand-alones:

  1. Death / Life, the two boundary-conditions of existence; nothing in either state can separate
  2. Angels / Principalities, supernatural beings, including hostile ones (archai = principalities, the Pauline term for hostile spiritual powers; cf. Eph 6:12; Col 2:15)
  3. Things present / Things to come, comprehensive time (no current circumstance or future one)
  4. Powers, political / spiritual powers of any kind
  5. Height / Depth, comprehensive space (astrological terms in Greco-Roman context: hupsōma = celestial elevation, bathos = abyss)
  6. Any other created thing, exhaustive catch-all (tis ktisis hetera, any other creature)

The rhetorical sweep is total: every dimension of created reality (existence, supernatural, temporal, political, spatial, all-other) is enumerated and excluded as separating-cause. Whatever-might-separate cannot.

The grounding: "the love of God in Christ Jesus"

The security is not grounded in the believer's faithfulness, performance, or perseverance. It is grounded in God's love (tēs agapēs tou theou), specifically the love that is in Christ Jesus our Lord (tēs en Christō Iēsou tō kyriō hēmōn). The Pauline structure is: God's love → revealed in Christ → mediating the relation of believer to God. As long as Christ is, and as long as God loves Christ, the believer-in-Christ is held secure by the same love that holds Christ in the Father's eternal embrace.

This is the essential Reformed-confessional reading of perseverance: the persever-ing is finally God's, not the believer's. The believer cannot lose what Christ holds. Cf. John 10:28-29, "and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand."

The Calvinism / Arminianism dispute

The verses are a principal proof-text in the Calvinism / Arminianism dispute over perseverance and assurance.

  • Reformed / Calvinist reading: the verses establish unconditional security of the elect. The believer in Christ cannot lose salvation; the eternal Father's love in Christ guarantees the final glorification of all who are truly in Christ. See Perseverance of the Saints and Calvinism vs Arminianism vs Molinism vs Open Theism.

  • Classical Arminian reading: the verses establish that no external power can separate the believer from God's love, but the believer can still freely apostatize (withdraw from union with Christ). The list of separators is comprehensive of external factors, but the believer's own freely-chosen rejection is not in the list. The Wesleyan-Arminian tradition reads passages like Heb 6:4-6, Heb 10:26-31, 2 Pet 2:20-22 as warning against possible apostasy that the Romans 8 security does not preclude.

  • Common ground: both readings agree that as long as one is in Christ, one is secure. They disagree on whether one can be not in Christ after having been in Christ. Romans 8:38-39 alone does not settle the question (it speaks of external separators); the resolution requires the broader NT canonical evidence.

Patristic and Reformed reading

John Chrysostom (Homilies on Romans 15, c. AD 391): the verses are the pastoral climax of Paul's argument. The believer's experience of suffering (cf. v. 36, "For thy sake we are killed all the day long") is reframed by the certainty of God's unbreakable love.

Augustine (Exposition on Psalm 30 etc., c. AD 416): the perseverance-of-the-saints doctrine has its principal Pauline anchor here. The believer is held by grace, not by self.

John Calvin (Commentary on Romans ad loc.): "For if it depended on us, it would be subject to numberless dangers, but as it depends only on God, the certainty of it is fixed." The Reformed-confessional perseverance doctrine is articulated systematically from this passage.

John Wesley (Notes on the New Testament ad loc.): Wesley reads the passage as a description of the experience of the believer-currently-in-Christ. The believer who maintains faith experiences this security; the believer who apostatizes forfeits it.

Apologetic and pastoral deployment

The verses are foundational for:

  1. Assurance of salvation, the pastoral application is the believer's confidence in God's love. Cf. Christian assurance.

  2. Theodicy of suffering, Paul writes these verses in the context of Christians being killed for their faith (v. 36 quoting Ps 44:22). The verses do not promise escape from suffering but unseparated-love-amid-suffering. Christian theodicy is not "God will spare His people from suffering" but "God's love sustains His people through suffering."

  3. Defeat of fear-based religion, many religious frameworks (and some distorted Christian traditions) operate on fear that one's standing with God depends on continued performance. Romans 8:38-39 forecloses fear-based religion by anchoring the believer's standing in God's unchangeable love.

The Roman-Imperial backdrop

Paul's enumeration of principalities / powers / height / depth uses vocabulary that overlaps with Roman-Imperial titles and Greco-Roman astrological-power-language. The pastoral subtext: even Caesar's empire cannot separate the believer from Christ. Within a generation of this letter, Roman emperors (Nero, then later Domitian) would actively persecute Christians; Paul's catalog already anticipates and excludes them as separating-cause.

Canonical-theological connections

  • John 10:28-29, "they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand"
  • John 6:37-40, "of all which he hath given me I should lose nothing" (rich hub: John 6.40)
  • John 17:11-12, Jesus's high-priestly prayer for the disciples' preservation
  • Romans 8:28-30, the golden chain, predestined / called / justified / glorified
  • Ephesians 1:13-14, sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise unto the day of redemption
  • Philippians 1:6, "he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ"
  • 1 Peter 1:3-5, "an inheritance incorruptible... reserved in heaven for you"
  • Hebrews 7:25, Christ's continuing intercession "to make intercession for them"
  • Jude 24-25, "unto him that is able to keep you from falling"

Key words

See also

Quoted in