Series on Romans
XII The Gospel and Confidence
Text: 8:28-39
Introduction
In verse 37 Paul says that we as Christians are “more than conquerors.” The foundation for that statement of truth begins in verse 28 because there we have a general principle that, in essence, God has nothing but good planned for us. This passage, verses 28-39 is one of the richest in Scripture and many individual verses could be a source of lengthy exposition. However, my desire is to draw together the goodness of God toward His people that is presented here. This is a single continuous and interconnected argument but it may be seen as describing Gods’ love to us in three actions which are that He plans, He performs, and He preserves.
I Planned
The plan is revealed in verses 28-31. And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified. What, then, shall we say in response to this? If God is for us, who can be against us? This is the pre-eminent passage in the Bible on the mysterious subject of predestination. Although the absolute sovereignty of God over whatsoever comes to pass is taught throughout the Bible, people stumble over this doctrine. There is a plethora of ways in which interpreters endeavor to escape the obvious. The two most common ways to fudge the meaning of the text are 1) confounding foreknowledge and predestination, and 2) limiting the extent of the predestination. The idea that we should be able to comprehend how God is governing the world is in itself presumptuous and absurd. God is infinite eternal and unchanging; we are finite, temporal and changing. We can know God personally, but we can never ever penetrate the mystery of Godliness. To put it bluntly, only God can understand God. In the first instance the confusion over foreknowledge and predestination is a vain and hopeless attempt to understand what we cannot. Men say that God foreknew, but he did not decree our salvation. That is totally absurd. How could God know what was not planned, or what was not definite. That is a nonsense statement. God knows everything because he made it so. Moreover, foreknowledge means more than just knowing something. In the Bible the word “know” is a synonym for love, so actually Paul is saying that God loved us first and then he chose or predestined us. As to the limiting of the scope of the predestination, the argument is that it only means that our conformity to Christ is predestined, but not our salvation, because as they say, our salvation depends on our choice. This is an exegesis of despair, for if God actually determined beforehand that we should be like His Son, how could this be accomplished without determining beforehand our regeneration, repentance, faith, and justification? This is exactly what Paul teaches. The whole chain of salvation is ordained for each of us from eternity past. Read Philippians 2:12 and 13, Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed—not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence—continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose. Try to explain how you can be working out your salvation if it is really God working in you. Who is responsible? Both! However you cannot understand the confluence of these two wills any more than you can understand how we freely choose Christ and yet we were chosen by God, or we would not have freely chosen Christ. Just believe the Bible and do not try to be God, whose understanding is infinite., and rest in the truth that God is for us.
II Performed
Beginning at verse 32 through 34 we have a presentation of how God performed this gracious plan of salvation, He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. Who is he that condemns? Christ Jesus, who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. This portion continues the glorious display of the power of Divine grace, and of the provision which God has made for the consolation of His people. We have read about the plan and now we are looking at the execution of the plan. Bear in mind that the whole point of Paul in Romans 8 is to comfort and strengthen God’s justified people that they may be certain of two things: First, that God loves them and secondly that the grace that has been offered to them in the gospel and which they have received is sufficient to provide all that is necessary for their eventual triumph. Robert Haldane reminds us that no stronger argument could be offered in proof of God’s favor to them than the gift of His own Son. He has given Him to redeem them from all their sins and all their troubles. And such is the dignity and excellency of Christ, that the Apostle, arguing from the greater to the less, further reminds them that after such a gift as that of His own Son, nothing can be refused which is consistent with the glory of God and the salvation of their souls. He thus assures them of freedom from the evils they might dread from sin and suffering. In fact, such is the permanence of God’s fixed provision that no matter what charge might be brought against them, God’s love and favor will never depart from them. Jesus Christ is their advocate and the perfection of His provision guarantees their position and their permanence in the family of God.
III Preserved
Thus we come to the final declaration of Paul regarding the permanence of our salvation in verses 35-39, Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? As it is written: “For your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.” No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. No one can condemn, no one can accuse and nothing can separate us from Christ. I wish to be careful to distinguish what Paul says here from the popular shibboleth, “eternal security.” As popularly used those words mean “once saved, always saved,” and they create an atmosphere of cheap grace and easy believism encouraging careless living. Those that are truly saved are, of course, saved forever, but there are two sides to this issue. God is preserving His own, and they in turn are persevering. In loving His Word and His children, God makes them love Him; and believers are enabled to love Christ because He loves them. It is He who first loved us, and in loving us has changed our hearts, and produced in them love to Him. In verse 35 the Apostle reviews a whole range of troubles that might be thought to separate us from Jesus’ love, but none of them will. He concludes the first list with a quotation from Psalm 44:22. “The quotation here,” says Professor Stuart, “is applied to the state of Christians in the Apostle’s times, as it was originally to those whom the Psalmist describes; in other words, the Apostle describes the state of suffering Christians, by the terms which were employed in ancient days to describe the suffering people of God.” We are being reminded that from time immemorial saints have suffered, and we should not expect anything different, but we should never despair. In verses 38 and 39 Paul gives us another list of things that cannot separate us from God. Here in similar triumphant language, Paul defies enemies still more formidable; asserting that all the conceivable powers of the universe shall not be able to separate them from the love of God which is in Jesus Christ. God is Lord of all, Creator of all, Maintainer of all, the Alpha and the Omega, and nothing in the material or spiritual realm can overwhelm His care. Thus, the conclusion that we are more than conquerors is reached, and it implies that we are always victorious. You might say, that it doesn’t feel that way, or look that way, but the Christian not only vanquishes, he is also a gainer by the assault of his enemy. It is better for him than if he had not been called to suffer. He is a gainer and a conqueror, both in the immediate fruits of his sufferings, as God overrules them for his good, bringing him forth from the furnace as gold refined, and also in their final issue as Paul says in II Corinthians 4:17, For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, works for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory.
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