Nothing Can Separate Us

No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced 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 8:37-39

Can anything separate us from the love of God?

No, at least according to the Apostle Paul.

In the last verses of the eighth chapter of Paul’s letter to the church in Rome he declares with absolute certainty that nothing can separate us from the love of God, not “hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword” (v.35).

Yesterday the General Conference of the United Methodist Church voted with Paul, but it was closer than you might think.

In the morning session they were revising the Preamble to our United Methodist Social Principles. The Rev. We Hyung Chang, pastor of the Belmont UMC in Belmont, Massachusetts, one of the clergy delegates from New England, proposed that they add this sentence, “We stand united in declaring our faith that God’s grace is available to all, that neither belief nor practice can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus.”

This might seem like basic Wesleyan theology. In fact, it might seem like basic Christianity. But among some of the delegates there was a fear that this would somehow soften their declaration that homosexuals and non-Christians really are (by their own choice, of course) separated from the love of God.

The Rev. Lisa Dianne Schubert, a clergy delegate from Indiana proposed that the word “nothing” be substituted for “neither belief nor practice. As she explained, “I want to say like in Romans 8, “nothing can separate us from the love of God.”

But that didn’t stop the debate.

This would be funny if it were not so sad. On the floor of General Conference they were actually debating whether they believed the central affirmation of Paul’s theology.

One delegate from Liberia argued that, “Putting that in there is telling us as Christians that our belief and our practice do not separate us, and that can be far from the truth because then we deny God’s judgment at the end of the ages.” A delegate from Florida argued that Paul was not talking about everyone, he was only talking about “those who are in Christ Jesus.”

But a narrow reading of Paul is just that. And it goes against the inclusive sweep of Paul’s understanding of God’s grace.

One of the deep ironies in the debate is that those who claim to believe the Bible literally (that is a generalization, of course) were willing to sacrifice a literal reading of Romans 8 in order to preserve a literal understanding of a few verses in Leviticus.

In the end, they decided that Paul was right and “nothing can separate us from the love of God.” I’m sure the Apostle was relieved. But as I said earlier, it was closer than you might think; the amendment carried by a vote of 532 to 414.