Pepeismai gar!
Pepeismai gar! Paul said that something (Someone)
had persuaded him some time earlier and that as he wrote he was still
utterly convinced that nothing could separate humans from the love of
God that is seen in and as Jesus Christ (Romans 8:38).
Romans, Chapter 8
35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Could oppression, or anguish, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? 36 Even as it is written, “For your sake we are killed all day long. We were accounted as sheep for the slaughter.” 37 No, in all these things, we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38 For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, 39 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.
38 πεπεισμαι γαρ οτι ουτε θανατος ουτε ζωη ουτε αγγελοι ουτε αρχαι ουτε δυναμεις ουτε ενεστωτα ουτε μελλοντα 39 ουτε υψωμα ουτε βαθος ουτε τις κτισις ετερα δυνησεται ημας χωρισαι απο της αγαπης του θεου της εν χριστω ιησου τω κυριω ημων
Note: I have added both the English and Greek text for clairty. Gary
In a whole
series of trenchant denials he lists what might be offered as proofs
that God had changed his mind and turned from his commitment to
creation. Ten times he says "no!" What about death? Does that
not prove that God has turned from us, that in the face of our moral
ugliness he has finally and forever walked away? "No, in fact, it was
through death, the death of Christ, that God placarded his faithful
refusal to abandon us!" What of life with all its dangers and
challenges? "Nor that!" What about evil angels? "Nor those!" And what
of emperors and such? "Nor those!" And on he goes. Ten times he says
no—this man who knew what pain and deprivation and loneliness was—ten
times he says no and concludes by saying "and nothing else you could
name!" can keep God from us.
He didn't persuade himself of this! The verb is passive. He
didn't use to think that way but now that he had seen the brutal
realities of life, day in and day out, he had changed his mind. The
verb is a perfect passive. He was persuaded and that frame of mind was still with him after all he had seen and heard and felt and experienced!
And if we had made a list of our own that had things in it that
weren't explicit in his he'd have said, "Nor that!" or "Not that
either!" He'd have said no until the cows came home because for him,
amidst all the teeming number of realities, there was one that was more
real than all else—God's self-disclosure in Jesus Christ.
Had we asked him if he
didn't accept that harsh realities were real, he'd have said, "Oh,
they're real enough. I've met them face to face and so have a host
besides me. But God is real! And Jesus Christ is real. I look
at all those harsh realities, walk around them, pick them up and feel
their weight and how solid they are and then I turn and see him
watching me. One look at him and the remotest hint of hesitation in me
burns away and the adventure continues. I get weary, of course, and I
don't always feel joyful and clear-headed. But that's part of the
adventure, don't you know. I have the complete awareness that even when
I feel these I'm still in the adventure. It's part of the adventure
that you brawl with tough realities. The real secret is to see him and once you've seen him, really
seen him, there's no going back. By then he has you and you don't want
to go back. Back to what, for pity's sake? Back to less than him? That isn't a real option. Not for people like us"
©2004 Jim McGuiggan. All materials are free to be copied and used as long as money is not being made.
Many thanks to brother Ed Healy, for allowing me to post from his website, the abiding word.com.