Separation part 3
Yesterday we looked at the question, "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?..." (Romans 8:35). And we answered a similar question, because nothing can separate you from that love. But we kind of missed the original question. WHO shall separate us? And the answer, in a sense, is "only you." Because even though nothing can separate us from God's love... we seem to separate ourselves from it at the drop of a hat. And we use any and every excuse we can think of to do so. I always come back to the garden of Eden to try and explain this. God told Adam that on the day he ate from the tree of knowledge of good and evil (the tree of death) he would surely die. And this isn't any sort of punishment, but simply the natural consequences of eating from that tree. Just like how eating from the Tree of Life gives you life... what else could the tree of death give you? It wasn't a COMMAND from God as much as it was a warning. But this is what Adam seemed to hear, "If you eat from that tree I'm going to get mad at you and punish you." Because as soon as Adam ate from it, and his (natural) eyes were opened, he realized he was naked, and he was ashamed of his nakedness, and he hid from the presence of God. Did you catch that? God didn't cast Adam out of His presence. Even when God cast Adam and Eve out of Eden... His presence went with them. Even that wasn't a punishment, because God was protecting Adam from eating from the Tree of Life and remaining in that "fallen state" forever. Basically Daddy always has our best interests at heart. All of the time. Basically NOTHING can separate us from His love. (Get it?) The problem was not our nakedness. And the problem was not how GOD reacted to our nakedness. We were naked the day before we ate of the tree of death and He didn't care. The problem... was how WE reacted to our nakedness. Shame. Hiding. A guilty, sin consciousness. And, really, that's been our problem ever since. So when we think of this idea of separation--that God is "way up there" and we are "way down here"--what we're really doing is separating OURSELVES from Him, when all He has ever done is love us and give His life for us and to us in order to reconcile us back to Him. Think about that for a minute: "Separation" that WE caused... that WE put there... and God gave His life in order to get rid of it. That's some serious love. That's some, "I don't care who you are or what you've done, because I can't live without you," love. And that's WHO GOD IS! We never have to see ourselves separate, or apart from Him. Because He lives in us and we live in Him. He gave His life for us, and He gave His life TO us. And now we can say the same thing that Jesus said in John 10:30, "I and my Father are one."