YESTERDAY WE SAW that “neither angels, nor principalities” could “separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” We mentioned that Jesus was imprisoned in the system of Roman Catholicism and that you couldn’t get to Him except through that system. In more subtle ways this system of intermediaries is found within Protestantism too. When we stop at the church and give our loyalty and love to that and never get to the living Christ, then an angel and a principality is separating us “from the love of God in Christ Jesus.” A good thing—an angel—is separating us from the Best. When we make the holding of orthodoxy the criterion of being a Christian, and make that the standard, we are stopping this side of being in Christ and have substituted for that being in orthodoxy. An “angel” has separated us. When we substitute faithfulness in churchgoing and church-support and recognize these things as the sign and standard of being a Christian, and thereby making irrelevant being in Christ, we are being separated from the love of Christ by an angel.
If we love husband, wife, or children more than we love Christ, an angel—a good thing—is separating us from the love of Christ. If a social set, a lodge, a service club, has our loyalty above Christ, then a good thing—an angel—is separating us from the love of Christ.
If, however, we remain in Christ, the ultimate best and the ultimate power, then all these angels and principalities are in their place—on the margin, held under the supreme loyalty to Christ. They cannot separate us from that love “for the love of Christ controls us” (2 Cor. 5:14)—and them. If sin cannot separate us, neither can the good things (which are often more dangerous than the bad) separate us. We are safe from the worst and from the half-goods when we are wholly and finally in Him.
O blessed Refuge, O blessed Security, I am safe and secure in the only security this universe knows—I am in Thee. Therefore all Thy security is in me. I inherit all that Thou, “the heir of all things” (Heb. 1:2), hast inherited. I am rich in Thee. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: No half-good not any good shall separate me from Him—the Best!
