Love's Triumph
A. Maclaren, D.D. Romans 8:38-39 For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come,… These rapturous words are the climax of the apostle's long demonstration that the gospel is "the power of God unto salvation." His argument started with sombre, sad words about man's sinfulness; like some stream rising among black and barren cliffs, or melancholy moorlands, and foaming through narrow rifts in gloomy ravines, it reaches at last fertile lands, and flows calm, the sunlight dancing on its broad surface, till it loses itself at last in the unfathomable ocean of the love of God. We are told that the biblical view of human nature is too dark. Well, the important question is not whether it be dark, but whether it be true. Certainly, a part of it is very dark. The picture of what men are, painted at the beginning of this Epistle, is black like a canvas of Rembrandt's. But to get the whole doctrine, we have to see what men may become. Christianity begins indeed with, "There is none that doeth good, no, not one," but it ends with this victorious paean, which tells us that the love of God is — I. UNAFFECTED BY THE EXTREMEST CHANGES OF OUR CONDITION. 1. The apostle begins his catalogue of vanquished foes by a pair of opposites, "neither death nor life," which cover the whole ground, and represent the extremes of change which can befall us. If these two stations, so far from each other, are equally near to God's love, then no intermediate point can be far from it. "Whether we live, we live unto the Lord; and whether we die, we die unto the Lord." His love to us makes no account of that mightiest of changes. How should it be affected by slighter ones? The distance of a star is measured by the apparent change in its position, as seen from different points of the earth's surface or orbit. But this great light stands steadfast in our heaven, nor moves a hair's breadth, nor pours a feebler ray on us, whether we look up to it from the midsummer of busy life, or from the midwinter of death. 2. Of course the confidence of immortality is implied in this thought. Death does not affect the essential vitality of the soul; so it does not affect the outflow of God's love to that soul. It is a change of condition and circumstance, and no more. 3. How this thought contrasts with the saddest aspect of the power of death! Death unclasps our hands from the closest, dearest grasp, parts soul and body, loosens every bond of society; but there is one bond which his "abhorred shears" cannot cut. Their edge is turned on it. One Hand holds us in a grasp which the fleshless fingers of death in vain strive to loosen. The separator becomes the uniter; he rends us apart from the world that he may "bring us to God." The love filtered by drops on us in life is poured upon us in a flood in death! II. UNDIVERTED FROM US BY ANY OTHER ORDER OF BEINGS. "Nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers." The supposition which is, indeed, an impossible one, that these ministering spirits should so forget their mission and contradict their nature as to seek to bar us out from the love which it is their chiefest joy to bring to us; and its very impossibility gives energy to his conclusion (see also Galatians 1:8), preaching another gospel than that which he had preached to them. The general thought implies — 1. The utter powerlessness of any third party in regard to the relations between our souls and God. We have to do with Him alone. These two, God and the soul, have to "transact," as if there were no other beings in the universe. (1) Angels, principalities, etc., may behold with sympathetic joy, and minister blessing in many ways; but the decisive act of union between God and the soul they can neither effect nor prevent. (2) And as for them, so for men around us; the limits of their power to harm us are soon set. They may shut us out from human love by calumnies, and annoy us in a thousand ways; they may build a wall around us, and imprison us from many a joy and fair prospect: but they cannot put a roof on it to keep out the sweet influences from above, or hinder us from looking up to the heavens. Nobody can come between us and God but ourselves. 2. These blessed spirits do not absorb and intercept His love. The planet nearest the sun is saturated with fiery brightness, but the rays pass on to each of the sister spheres in its turn, and travel away outwards to where the remotest of them all rolls in its far-off orbit. Like that poor woman who could lay her fingers on the hem of Christ's garment, notwithstanding the thronging multitude, we can reach our hands through all the crowd, or rather He reaches His strong hand to us and heals and blesses us. All the guests are fed full at that great table. One's gain is not another's loss. The multitudes sit on the green grass, and the last man of the last fifty gets as much as the first; and more remains than fed them all. This healing fountain is not exhausted of its curative power by the early comers. III. RAISED ABOVE THE POWER OF TIME. "Nor things present, nor things to come." We had first a pair of opposites, and then a triplet; now again a pair of opposites, again followed by a triplet. The effect of this is to divide the whole into two, and to throw the first and second classes more closely together, as also the third and fourth. Time and space, these two mysterious ideas, which work so fatally on all human love, are powerless here. 1. The great revelation of God, on which the whole of Judaism was built, was that made to Moses of the name "I am that I am." And parallel was that symbol of the bush, which signified not the continuance of Israel, unharmed by the fiery furnace of persecution, but the eternity of Israel's God. Both proclaimed the same great truth of self-derived, self-determined, timeless, undecaying being. 2. And this eternity of being is no mere metaphysical abstraction. It is eternity of love, for God is love. We know of earthly loves which cannot die, and we have to thank God for such instances of love stronger than death, which make it easier for us to believe in the unchanging duration of His. But we know, too, of love that can change, and we know that all love must part. How blessed then to know of a love which cannot change or die! The past, the present and the future are all the same to Him. The whole of what He has been to any past, He is to us to-day. 3. So we may bring the blessedness of all the past into the present, and calmly face the misty future, sure that it cannot rob us of His love. Looking on all the flow of ceaseless change of earthly affection, we can lift up with gladness, heightened by the contrast, the triumphant song of the ancient Church, "Oh, give thanks unto the Lord: for He is good: because His mercy endureth for ever!" IV. PRESENT EVERYWHERE. The apostle ends with, "nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature," as if he had got impatient of the enumeration of impotencies, and having named the outside boundaries in space, flings, as it were, with one rapid toss, into that large room the whole that it can contain, and triumphs over it all. As the former clause proclaimed the powerlessness of time, so this proclaims the powerlessness of that other great mystery of creatural life which we call space. Height or depth, it matters not. That diffusive love diffuses itself equally in all directions. The distance from the centre is equal to Zenith or to Nadir. Here we have the same process applied to that idea of omnipresence as was applied in the former clause to the idea of eternity. That thought, so hard to grasp with vividness, and not altogether a glad one to a sinful soul, is all softened and glorified, as some solemn Alpine cliff of bare rock is when the tender morning light glows on it, when it is thought of as the omnipresence of love. "Then, God, seest me," may be a stern word, if the God who sees be but a mighty Maker or a righteous Judge. But how different it all is when we can east over the marble whiteness of that solemn thought the warm hue of life. In that great ocean of the Divine love we live and move and have our being, floating in it like some sea flower which spreads its filmy beauty and waves its long tresses in the depths of mid-ocean. The sound of its waters is ever in our ears, and above, beneath, around us, its mighty currents run evermore. We need not fear the omnipresence of love, nor the omniscience which knows us altogether, and loves us even as it knows. Rather we shall be glad that we are ever in His presence.Conclusion: 1. The recognition of this triumphant sovereignty of love over all these real and supposed antagonists makes us, too, lords over them, and delivers us from the temptations which some of them present us to separate ourselves from the love of God. They all become our servants and helpers, uniting us to that love. So we are set free from the dread of death and from the distractions incident to life. So we are delivered from superstitious dread of an unseen world, and from craven fear of men. So we are emancipated from absorption in the present and from careful thought for the future. So we are at home everywhere, and every corner of the universe is to us one of the many mansions of our Father's house. "All things are yours .... and ye are Christ's; and Christ is God's." 2. But remember that this love of God is "in Christ Jesus our Lord." Love illimitable, all-pervasive, eternal; yes, but a love which has a channel and a course, love which has a method and a process by which it pours itself over the world. In Christ the love of God is all centred and embodied, that it may be imparted to all sinful and hungry hearts, even as burning coals are gathered on a hearth that they may give warmth to all that are in the house. (A. Maclaren, D.D.) Parallel Verses KJV: For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, WEB: For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers,