Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? … No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. – Romans 8:35-39
I don’t have much to say today. I probably need to sleep more. This passage doesn’t need any help from me
anyway. It came up in the comments on
One Cosmos yesterday as Kurt spoke of it, and it seemed like a good way to end
the week.
What was it that caused the Lord such agony in the Garden of
Gethsemane? For eternity He had been
with the Father. Throughout the
Incarnation, even as a man, He had never known the absence of His Father or of the Father's love. He knew, though, He was
about to experience the wrath of Divine Justice. He was going to suffer the righteous and appropriate
consequences of humanity’s sin. He would
be cut off from God’s love in death. The
thought of that caused such trauma in His soul that blood mingled with His
sweat as He prayed.
The Lord endured this suffering on our behalf, that we who
were separated from the Father might be welcomed into His presence and
experience, not His wrath and judgment, but His mercy and His love. We are in Christ. Because the Lord stepped in and took our
place in being cut off by our sin, we can step into the Presence clothed in Him
and His righteousness and remain, now and forever.
Passing through the door of death only brings us that much
closer to Him.
1 comment:
Amen. And our Lord went through that agony alone.
I don't think any human can possibly imagine the pain he went through, because, thank God, we never hafta be alone, for He is always there with us and will never forsake us.
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