God’s purpose for me ends in glory (30), in receiving the whole world as a Garden of Eden in bliss and peace (31). This purpose can only be generated and maintained in love (31, 32). God predestined my glory to come. Being predestined means he planned my glorious future in eternal bliss even before I was conceived, even before the creation of the world.
The believers in Jesus whom Paul was writing to in Rome and in many other places had experience or were experiencing trouble, hardship, persecution, famine, nakedness, danger, sword, and even faced death all day long (35-36).
During such life-draining events, I wonder if God really loves me. I ask the mostly unanswered question, “Why?” more specifically I am thinking, “Why me? Why this now? What have I done? How is this good for me? Is God against me?” So spins my thoughts in self-pity ruts. Yet are these questions really unanswered?
Here’s the great news. God does love me. He is not against me. God is for me (31). None of these life-draining events can separate me from God’s love (34). God always loves me, always.
Then I think, “Ok. God is good. He is love. So then something must be wrong on my end. I did something and now God doesn’t love me anymore.” No. Not even anything I do can separate me from the love of God. Sin has consequences. Yet these too are God’s love.
Nothing can separate me from the love of God. Paul wrote those experiencing life-draining events, “I am sure that nothing can separate us from God’s love—not life or death, not angels or spirits, not the present or the future, 39and not powers above or powers below. Nothing in all creation can separate us from God’s love for us in Christ Jesus our Lord!”