A Hyman of Security
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What shall we then say to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us?
He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?
Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God’s elect? It is God that justifieth.
Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us.
Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?
As it is written, For thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.
Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us.
For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come,
Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Introduction:
I. The Atonement is Stunning (vs. 31)
What shall we then say to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us?
As we will see in a moment, the religious heretics that were wondering around made it necessary that the focus still be laid on the security of the believers.
Paul realized that some fearful believers would have doubts about their security and that false teachers would be ready to exploit those doubts.
In order to to give believers the needed assurance, the Apostle reveals God’s answer to two closely related questions: Can any person or can any circumstance cause a believer to lose their salvation?
But I really like the way that Paul starts this section of Scripture.
He begins with almost what seems to be an excitement in his voice, “what shall we say about these things?”
What should be our response to this announcement of Divine Sovereignty working itself out in history for our redemption?
There are several responses to to any presentation of the doctrine of predestination.
Usually, there is a howl of protest and people react negatively to the whole concept.
Event hose who do acquiesce in the doctrine of predestination, do it with a spirit of being more or less forced to surrender to the clarity of the teaching of Scripture.
The normal human reaction to predestination, then, is one of reluctance at least, or even belligerence.
But that is not the apostle’s response.
It is certainly not his purpose to grind his teeth against Divine sovereignty, rather he looks on the bright side of.
HE says:
What shall we then say to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us?
The Gospel of God: Romans God’s Sovereignty and the Christian Response (8:28–39)
Divine sovereignty is the ultimate source of comfort for the Christian believer, because it means that God is in control of his destiny. What could be more comforting to the Christian than to know that the outcome of his life is not in the hands of fortuitous circumstances, but is in the hands of a benevolent God?
One of the most frequent objections to Divine election is that it is a kind of fatalism.
Fatalism is a very pessimistic view of reality, and originally meant that the affairs of men are determined and dictated by the arbitrary, capricious and whimsical activities of the Fates, a sort of junior-grade deities, who took delight is causing untold grief to their human target and objects.
Then there is the more abstract and sophisticated sense of fatalism which says that the affairs of man are dictated by the blind, impersonal forces of nature.
In modern language, fatalism means that there are times when we are victims of circumstances, victims of the accidental movement of the atoms and the random activities of impersonal forces.
So whether we think of fatalism as the result of sub-deities or blind impersonal natural forces, either one would put a cloud over the pursuit of happiness.
To think that all of my efforts in this world can be set aside in one moment of collision with these blind impersonal forces.
That’s pessimistic!
The Gospel of God: Romans God’s Sovereignty and the Christian Response (8:28–39)
Paul is saying that our ultimate destiny is in the hands of a holy, omnipotent, sovereign, righteous, loving, personal God and that this is a cause for rejoicing.
If for one second there was one molecule running around in the universe out of the control of the sovereignty of God, I would have to surrender to the despair.
If there is one molecule outside of the control of God’s sovereignty then there is no guarantee whatsoever that the promises of God will in fact ever come to pass.
Paul’s reaction to the truths of Divine Sovereignty and the Golden Chain of Redemption is almost a silence because he, like us, could not put into words the wonder of the Grace that brings about salvation.
He could not wrapped his mind around the fact that based on nothing that the Father saw in me (and we will see that in the next chapter), he foreordained me and set my destination.
And that destination was to be conformed to the image of Christ.
And that He brought that about was by calling everyone that He predestined to this conformity, and then justifying them.
That is, declaring to have to disobeyed the law and then reckoning us to have obeyed the law in Christ.
And then to the ultimate end of glorifying us.
That is taking about the alien righteousness that was given to me that belongs to Christ and giving me my own righteousness.
No wonder Paul said, “What can we say to these things?”
The Gospel of God: Romans God’s Sovereignty and the Christian Response (8:28–39)
The good news is found in the words, If God is for us. Paul is describing the ultimate sense of experiencing someone who is for us, and in this case it is God. This is the message of predestination: God does not leave me to impersonal, fortuitous circumstances. God determines, in a very real way, my destiny which is glorification. Whatever else happens to me in this world, I know that God is for me. That knowledge is humbling, as well as comforting.
The Apostle uses in the phrase, “if God be for us” a condition in Greek known as the first class condition.
In the first class condition you have the condition “if”” and then you have the results of that condition being met.
It basically says that for the sake of argument that it something is true, then something else will follow.
The condition “of God is for us” the results of the condition being met “who can be against us”.
And since the condition is about a sovereign God who the Apostle has just shared some amazing truth, we could translate the first class condition as “since God is for us who can be against us”.
Now, of course, when the Apostle says “who can be against us” he is certainly not saying that there is nothing that is against us because certainly there is.
Christianity has always recognized art least three great forces that are against us.
The World, the flesh and the devil.
The world is against us because Christianity is an offense to it and is opposed to its God-rebelling ways.
Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.
:15
The world will try and get us to conform to it and failing at that it will try and do us in.
Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.
Our flesh is also an enemy because it contains the seeds of sin within it; and we are unable to escape its influence in this life.
For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life—is not from the Father but is from the world.
Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? Or what fellowship has light with darkness?
Therefore go out from their midst, and be separate from them, says the Lord, and touch no unclean thing; then I will welcome you,
2 Cor.
Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them.
And if that were not enough, we have a powerful enemy in Satan, who Peter describes:
Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour:
So there are plenty of enemies against us, but what are these when they are put into a sentence contained the verse’s first half. “if God be for us…?”
And so the idea of the first class condition is “since God is for us....”
This leaves no doubt that God is on our side.
Romans, Volume 2: The Reign of Grace (Romans 5:1–8:39): An Expositional Commentary “Who Can Be Against Us?”
Paul has just banished doubt in the passage before this. He has shown how God has set his love upon us, predetermining that we are to be conformed to the likeness of his own beloved Son. Then, having made the predetermination, he has called, justified, and glorified us. In this verse “if” means “since”—“since God is for us”—and that makes the difference.
And since God is on our side, there is no one that can stand against us.
Listen, because of the sovereign work of the atonement, the world, the flesh and the devil have no power to stand against you.
You do not have to lie down like a lifeless, impotent creature and take the defeat from these three evil forces.
In Christ, they have no power over you because since God is for you, there is no one that can stand against you.
The beauty of sovereign redemption is that not only is heaven determined but also our conformity to Christ is determined and secured.
This is why the Apostle exclaims in utter praise the wonder of salvation, because the atonement is stunning.
II. The Atonement is Substitutionary (vs. 32)
He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?
Romans 8:32