Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? Just as it is written, “For Your sake we are being put to death all day long; We were considered as sheep to be slaughtered.” But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

—Romans 8:35-39

I’ve been a pretty big Disney fan since I was a child (excluding, of course, their most recent work which is significantly too woke for my tastes). I have way too many Disney songs memorized and I guarantee I can beat you at a game of Disney trivia. Before Disney started pushing a political agenda, they were absolute masters of storytelling, and their movies were full of mic-drop moments that captured the hearts of their audiences.

One of those moments is in the movie Frozen 2. Anna has spent most of the movie missing Kristoff’s attempts to propose to her because she is so worried about Elsa. As a result, Kristoff has been flustered and there’s been conflict in the relationship.

But there’s a moment when the couple comes to the point where they have to work through it. They explain to each other what’s been going on. Anna apologizes for her lack of attention and understanding toward Kristoff, and then he drops a line that I’m willing to bet millions of women dreamed about hearing from their husbands after taking their daughters to see the movie: “It’s okay. My love is not fragile.”

It’s one of those lines that make you realize many of us have been living afraid of just that—that someone’s love for us is fragile and could break at any moment. 

It makes sense. We were created with a deep need to be loved and accepted by the people around us, so the possibility that we could lose that with little or no warning would naturally be terrifying to us.

The good news is, yet again we find that C.S. Lewis was right when he observed that there are no needs we have that do not have something that provides for its fulfillment. We need a love strong enough for us to be secure. We need a love that isn’t fragile, and Paul makes it clear that God’s Love fits the bill and more.

Being a Christian in the first century wasn’t easy. State-sponsored persecution hadn’t begun yet, but we can get a pretty good idea of what it was like to be open about one’s faith in Christ by looking at the persecution Paul endured, often from other Jews. He was threatened, beaten, stoned, and arrested, but never once was he separated from God’s Love for him. And the same goes for us. No matter what happens in our lives, God’s Love isn’t fragile; it can’t be broken or taken away from us.

There are a couple of things I really like about this passage. One is how Paul doesn’t shy away from the trials and persecution he was going through. He doesn’t hide the potential difficulty of the Christian life but explains why it’s worth it anyway—because of God’s unbreakable Love.

The other is a couple of phrases in verse 38—nor things present, nor things to come.

I find the lack of specificity in these phrases interesting. From the context, I expect that Paul was referring to circumstances—current circumstances and circumstances God knows are coming in the future. 

But things is such a vague word, while I am not an ancient Greek scholar, I don’t see anything in the original language to indicate any more specificity. Because of this, I can’t help but wonder what else might be included in the things present and things to come. 

What comes to mind is our failures. The times when we are too preoccupied to notice God speaking to us or trying to demonstrate His Love for us. The times when we choose others over Him. The times when our love for Him is fragile and fickle.

If that’s true—that our own failures cannot separate us from His Love (and I believe it is whether Paul was saying it here or not) —then there’s something else we need to note. There isn’t even a mention of things past. 

I would argue that this makes sense given that Paul is writing to fellow believers. For those of us who have placed our faith in Jesus, our past failures have been removed from us as far as the East is from the West. We already have assurance that God’s Love covers those past things, so what does God assure us of here? That His Love is stronger than any future sins, and even the sins we may find ourselves committing right now.

Our God’s Love for us is far from fragile, and while it can hurt to know we’ve let Him down at times, I pray we’ll find peace this week in knowing how truly secure we can be in that Love.