¹² By now you should be teachers. Instead, you still need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God’s word. You need milk, not solid food. ¹³ All those who live on milk lack the experience to talk about what is right. They are still babies. ¹⁴ However, solid food is for mature people, whose minds are trained by practice to know the difference between good and evil.

²⁶ At the same time the Spirit also helps us in our weakness, because we don’t know how to pray for what we need. But the Spirit intercedes along with our groans that cannot be expressed in words. ²⁷ The one who searches our hearts knows what the Spirit has in mind. The Spirit intercedes for God’s people the way God wants him to.

Nothing Can Separate Us from God’s Love

²⁸ We know that all things work together for the good of those who love God—those whom he has called according to his plan. ²⁹ This is true because he already knew his people and had already appointed them to have the same form as the image of his Son. Therefore, his Son is the firstborn among many children. ³⁰ He also called those whom he had already appointed. He approved of those whom he had called, and he gave glory to those whom he had approved of.

³¹ What can we say about all of this? If God is for us, who can be against us? ³² God didn’t spare his own Son but handed him over ⌞to death⌟ for all of us. So he will also give us everything along with him. ³³ Who will accuse those whom God has chosen? God has approved of them. ³⁴ Who will condemn them? Christ has died, and more importantly, he was brought back to life. Christ is in the honored position—the one next to God the Father on the heavenly throne. Christ also intercedes for us. ³⁵ What will separate us from the love Christ has for us? Can trouble, distress, persecution, hunger, nakedness, danger, or violent death separate us from his love? ³⁶ As Scripture says:

³⁷ The one who loves us gives us an overwhelming victory in all these difficulties. ³⁸ I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love which Christ Jesus our Lord shows us.^[a] We can’t be separated by death or life, by angels or rulers, by anything in the present or anything in the future, by forces ³⁹ or powers in the world above or in the world below, or by anything else in creation.