Verses 31–9, in fact, draw together the whole scripture, all human experience, the whole hostile world, and the whole victorious gospel. The point is that none of these things – whether events, as in 35, or forces and powers as in 38 and 39 – can separate ‘us’ from God’s Messiah-shaped love. Again, the ‘us’ here is those ‘in the Messiah’, the people in whose hearts the spirit witnesses that they are God’s children, and groans with their pain at the world’s dark depths. And Paul at last makes it explicit – for the first time since 5.6–10 – that this is all about love. I suspect we don’t
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