“Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?”
The full verse · Romans 8:35 · KJV
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Asked by
Paul: the apostle writing to the church at Rome, who himself had known labours, stripes, prisons, hunger, and nakedness (2 Corinthians 11:23, 27)
The Scene
After showing that no one can accuse or condemn God's people (Romans 8:33-34), Paul asks whether anything can separate them from the love of Christ.
Why It Was Asked
The purpose behind the questionPaul names the hardest things a believer might face and asks whether any of them can cut believers off from Christ's love. The first question asks "who"; the second runs through "what": pressure, distress, persecution, hunger, lack of clothing, danger, and death by the sword. Commentators read "the love of Christ" two ways. Gill says it is not the saints' love to Christ but Christ's love to them. Barnes takes it the other way, as "Who shall cause us to cease to love the Saviour?" Both views matter: one stresses Christ's grip on us, the other our perseverance in loving Him. Paul's conclusion speaks of "the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Romans 8:39).
The Response
What Scripture recordsPaul first admits the suffering is real, quoting Psalm 44:22: "For thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter" (Romans 8:36). Then he answers: "Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us" (Romans 8:37). He closes with his settled conviction that neither death, nor life, nor any power, "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).
Historical Context
The world behind the wordsPaul's list was not theory. He describes his own life with the same kinds of words: "in stripes above measure, in prisons more frequent, in deaths oft" and "in hunger and thirst... in cold and nakedness" (2 Corinthians 11:23, 27); Barnes cites 2 Corinthians 11:23 here. Barnes defines "tribulation" as "pressure from without; affliction arising from external causes." "Sword" points to violent death. Psalm 44, which Paul quotes in Romans 8:36, is a psalm of God's people suffering even though they had not forgotten Him.
The Bigger Picture
Where this fits in God's storyThis question is the high point of Romans 8. Paul does not promise that believers will escape tribulation or sword. He promises that none of these things can separate them from Christ's love. The very things that look like signs of God's absence cannot cut His people off from Him.
Matthew Henry puts it simply: "None can take Christ from the believer: none can take the believer from Him." The word "through him that loved us" (Romans 8:37) shows where the victory comes from. It is not the strength of the sufferer but the love of the Savior.
Look Closer
Does Paul say believers will avoid the trials he lists?
Carry the question into prayer and conversation.
Lord, when hardship makes me feel far from You, how are You holding on to me in it?
A prayer to carry into the day.
- Which of the things in Paul's list feels most able to pull you away from Christ's love? Why that one?
- Tell about a hard season when you later saw that Christ's love had not let you go.
For you, a small group, a friend, or the dinner table.
Hardship can make you feel cut off from God. Paul names the hardest things he could think of and says none of them can separate you from Christ's love.
This does not mean you will not suffer. Paul quotes a psalm about being "killed all the day long" (Romans 8:36). It means that in the suffering, not only after it, you are held by "him that loved us" (Romans 8:37).
When you cannot feel His love, you can still rest on Paul's conviction: nothing "shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Romans 8:39).
Built from the biblical text and checked against trusted commentaries and lexicons. References & Sources
Keep questioning
“What shall we then say to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us?”
“He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?”
“Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God's elect?”
“Who is he that condemneth?”