Nothing Can Separate Us
Preached at Blue Ocean Faith Columbus on Sunday, June 14, 2026
Reminder: I never stick completely to my written sermon. This isn’t a transcript, but the written sermon I was using when I preached.
Friends, listen for a word from God in Paul’s Letter to the Romans, the 8th chapter, verses 31-39.
What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? 32 He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things? 33 Who shall bring a charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. 34 Who is he who condemns? It is Christ who died, and furthermore is also risen, who is even at the right hand of God, who also makes intercession for us. 35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? 36 As it is written:
“For Your sake we are killed all day long;
We are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.”
37 Yet 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 powers, nor things present nor things to come, 39 nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
This is the word of God for the people of God.
I. The Declaration
“If God is for us, who can be against us?”
This is one of the primary and best-known questions in the Bible. It’s probably the single most important question Paul asks in all of his writings.
“If God is for us, who can be against us?”
Of course, it’s a rhetorical question. Paul’s not searching. He’s not looking for an answer.
“If God is for us, who can be against us?”
Say it after me: “If God is for us…”
“Who can be against us?”
This God isn’t watching us from a careful distance. They’re not tolerating us from behind a wall of requirements. She’s for us. He’s on our side. They’re in our corner. Present. Committed. Decided.
The single word “for” is load bearing. Everything else in this passage rests on it. And before we go any further this evening, I want you to hear it without the asterisks the world has tried to add. God is for you. Not a cleaned-up version of you. Not a future version of you who’s finally resolved whatever the church told you to resolve. You, exactly as God made you, on the day you were knit together, before you ever did anything to earn it.
That’s where we start. And by the time we’re done, I want us to end there too.
II. The One Who Did Not Spare
Paul’s next move is to ask what “for us” actually cost. “He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?”
If God gave the most precious thing — held nothing back, spared nothing, gave it all — then what exactly is God going to withhold from you now? After that? The One who gave everything is not going to turn around and say: yes, but not quite you. Yes, but only after you change. Yes, but only if you’re a version of yourself, I find more comfortable.
That’s not a God who gave everything. That’s a God who gave everything with fine print.
Love isn’t love if it comes with conditions, requirements, exceptions, and fine print. Those conditions and that fine print has told Queer Christians that we are loved, but that our love is disordered, our relationships are broken, and our belonging is conditional on remaining single and celibate or even becoming someone else. It’s handed LGBTQIA+ people a Bible and said: God loves you, but not like you are.
That’s a lie. And Paul’s logic won’t hold it up.
The God who did not spare the Son freely gives us all things. Freely. Not cautiously. Not partially. Not after review. Freely.
III. Who Dares Bring a Charge?
In verse 33, Paul asks a related question: “Who shall bring a charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies.”
Paul’s using courtroom language here, and deliberately. He knows what it’s like to stand accused. The communities he’s writing to know it too. They’re minorities, ethnically mixed, people like Paul who straddle two identities, two legal codes, two consequences if they’re found to be Christians. These are people meeting secretly in their homes, certainly being watched by forces of the empire. They know what it means to have your legitimacy and your place in the community challenged.
So do we. LGBTQIA+ people have sat in church pews and been told we were an abomination. We’ve been handed religious pamphlets designed to convince us that we’re broken. We’ve watched denominations vote on whether our lives are acceptable. We’ve heard pastors preach, with both great sincerity and great harm, that God’s love for us stops at the door of our sexual orientations and gender identities.
Paul’s question cuts through all of it. Who has the standing to bring that charge? Who has the authority to declare that the people God has already justified are actually outside the circle of grace?
Bishop Yvette Flunder, TFAM’s founder and presiding prelate, has named this clearly: the church has too often traded the Gospel of radical welcome for the gospel of comfortable exclusion. It’s not faithfulness that pushes LGBTQIA+ people out of congregations and families. It’s fear. It’s the ancient human instinct to draw a line and put someone else on the other side of it.
But God justifies. The verdict is already in. And no denomination, no doctrinal statement, no family member who quoted Leviticus at you over Thanksgiving, no pastor thundering from marble pulpits or a music stand; none of them have the standing to overturn it.
IV. Nothing on the List
Now Paul asks the question he’s been building toward all along. “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or the sword?”
He’s not listing hypotheticals. These are the actual conditions of the people he’s writing to and they’re actual conditions for us today. Paul’s Roman audience was experiencing tribulation. They knew distress. Some of them had faced the sword. And Paul doesn’t skip past that. He quotes Psalm 44:22 right into the middle of it: “For Your sake we are killed all day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.”
And we know what that feels like too. On Thursday, right here in Ohio, more than 100 FBI agents raided the Cleveland offices of the Ohio Organizing Collaborative and showed up at some of the organizers’ homes, took laptops and cell phones, and accosted staff and board members with and without subpoenas in a clear campaign of intimidation against people who have dedicated their careers to protecting voting access and voting rights. Meanwhile, ICE agents conducted a similar campaign against organizers and attorneys in other states working to assist undocumented children and other minors in the immigration and deportation processes. People harassed and accosted for doing nothing more dangerous than practical democracy. One leader said it was terrifying. It’s a different sword than Paul’s Roman audience was facing, but it’s still a sword. It’s still the forces of empire doing what empire always does. That’s what peril looks like in 2026.
Paul isn’t offering cheap comfort or a fast bypass around pain. He’s saying: I see the wound. I know what it costs. And I’m telling you anyway, none of it separates you from God.
Then he says it: “Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us.”
More than conquerors. The Greek here is hupernikōmen, which is a bit difficult to translate properly into English, but overwhelmingly victorious or exceedingly triumphant come fairly close. Not just surviving. Not hanging on by a thread. Overcoming. Flourishing. And not because the pain wasn’t real, but because the love is more real.
Then comes the final list: “Neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Hear what’s not on that list. Your sexual orientation isn’t on that list. Your gender identity isn’t on that list. Your racial and ethnic identities aren’t on the list. The ways in which your ability differs from someone else isn’t on the list. None of these appears as an exception, because none of them are an exception.
V. Made This Way, Loved This Way
The good news of this passage isn’t only that God tolerates us. It’s that God made us. It’s that God looked at us and called us good. It’s that God loves us.
This is what the church at its worst has refused to say. The church has been willing to offer a partial welcome as long as you agree that the core of who you are is something God regrets. As long as you treat your own identity as a problem to be managed rather than a gift to be celebrated.
That’s not the gospel. The Gospel is that God looked at every human being, in every expression of gender, in every form of love, in every body, soul, and name and said: “beloved.” That’s not a mistake. That’s not a test. That’s the truth of the One who made you and has not stopped being for you.
If you’ve been told that God made you wrong, that the person you are is the thing that puts you outside the reach of grace, I want you to hear this evening: that those messages are not the word of God. God has said from the very beginning that you were made on purpose, for a purpose, and you are loved without reservation, beyond measure, exactly as you are.
VI. The Declaration, Again
So, here’s where we land.
“If God is for us, who can be against us?”
Not the pastor who told you that you were an abomination. Not the parent who said their faith required them to choose. Not the denomination that voted against your dignity. Not the theology that dressed fear up as faithfulness and called it love.
None of them can stand against the verdict of the One who made you, who did not spare the Son, who justifies freely, who loves without exception. None of them have that standing. None of them have that power.
You are not a casualty of God’s love. You are not an asterisk at the bottom of the welcome. You are a child of God, made as you are, named as you are, claimed as you are, and nothing — nothing in all of creation — can take that from you.
Not death. Not life. Not angels. Not powers. Not the church’s fear. Not the world’s contempt.
Nothing.
Amen.