Welcome to Friday's Things Unseen, especially if you're new to our weekday podcast.

This week we've been thinking about a remarkable feature in Paul's words in Romans chapter

8 verses 31 through 35.

The way he asks a series of rapid fire questions that begin with the personal interrogative

who, when we'd probably expect that his questions would begin with the impersonal pronoun

what. And I've been suggesting that the who he has in mind is Satan, the devil, the one

Simon Peter calls our adversary our enemy. And we've come to Paul's fourth question.

Who can separate us from the love of Christ?

The first items in this long list of potential separators are interestingly all impersonal,

tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, peril, sword. And then as his list continues

death and life, things present, things to come height and depth, while he does include

personal agents like angels and rulers and powers. But it becomes very obvious that he's really

thinking about powerful personal forces, the devil and his angels who are against us.

So how can we be so sure that we are secure against such opposition as this?

Paul doesn't give the kind of very specific answer he had given to his three previous questions.

Now all he says is that we are more than conquerors through him who loved us,

and that nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

And these seem to be statements more than arguments, confessions more than logical explanations.

But there is a powerful logic at work here too. Paul is picking up the threads of what he'd said

earlier. We conquer through the love of God because that love is demonstrated to us in Christ.

So he's now bringing together everything he'd said earlier and weaving it into a threefold card

that can't easily be broken. Listen to what he'd said in Romans chapter 8 verses 28 to 30 when he

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