Romans 8.33-No One Can Bring A Charge Against The Christian Because God Has Declared The Christian Justified Through Faith In Christ
Wenstrom Bible Ministries
Pastor-Teacher Bill Wenstrom
Tuesday January 27, 2009
Romans: Romans 8:33-No One Can Bring A Charge Against The Christian Because God Has Declared The Christian Justified Through Faith In Christ
Lesson # 283
Please turn in your Bibles to Romans 8:31.
This evening we will study Romans 8:33 and in this passage, Paul teaches that no one can bring a charge against the Christian because God has declared the Christian justified through faith in Jesus Christ.
Let’s read this final paragraph and then concentrate on verse 33 for the rest of the evening.
Romans 8:31-39, “What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him over for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things? Who will bring a charge against God's elect? God is the one who justifies; who is the one who condemns? Christ Jesus is He who died, yes, rather who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who also intercedes for us. Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? Just as it is written, ‘FOR YOUR SAKE WE ARE BEING PUT TO DEATH ALL DAY LONG; WE WERE CONSIDERED AS SHEEP TO BE SLAUGHTERED.’ But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, 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.”
Let’s now concentrate on verse 33.
Romans 8:33, “Who will bring a charge against God's elect? God is the one who justifies.”
The rhetorical questions that appear in Romans 8:33-35 bring out the implications of Paul’s statement in Romans 8:31 that God is for each and every Christian.
“Who” is the interrogative pronoun tis (tiv$) (tis), which asks a rhetorical question that demands or expects a negative response.
“Will bring a charge” is the third person singular future active indicative form of the verb enkaleo (e)nkalevw) (eng-kal-eh-o), which is a technical legal term for bringing a formal accusation or charge against someone in a court of law.
In Romans 8:33, the word is used in a legal sense with the believer’s prosecutor being Satan who attempts to press legal charges against the believer in the courtroom of heaven.
1 John 2:1 teaches that Jesus Christ is the believer’s advocate in the courtroom of heaven.
1 John 2:1, “My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. And if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.”
“Advocate” is the noun parakletos, which refers to the fact that the Lord Jesus Christ is the defense attorney for all believers by interceding for them when Satan accuses them before the Supreme Court of heaven when they sin.
In the Supreme Court of heaven, the Lord Jesus Christ acts as the believer’s advocate with the Father when the believer commits any mental, verbal or overt act of sin.
In this passage, the word describes the Lord Jesus Christ as the believer’s advocate and defense attorney to defend and intercede for the believer before the Father when Satan accuses the believer.
The Lord’s voluntary substitutionary spiritual death on the cross is the basis for the Lord’s intercessory ministry at the right hand of the Father because all accusations against the believer are met perfectly and refuted by this unique death of our Lord on the cross.
The Greek New Testament terms Satanas, “Satan” and diabolos, “devil” are legal terms with the former meaning “adversary,” and the latter meaning “slanderer, false accuser.”
Therefore, the Lord Jesus Christ defends the believer by stating to the Father that He paid for the sins committed by the believer that Satan is bringing up before the Supreme Court of heaven.
Revelation 12:10, “Then I heard a loud voice in heaven, saying, ‘Now the salvation, and the power, and the kingdom of our God and the authority of His Christ have come, for the accuser of our brethren has been thrown down, he who accuses them before our God day and night.’”
This intercessory ministry of the Lord Jesus Christ as the defense attorney for church age believers at the right hand of the Father is directly related to the Lord Jesus Christ’s present session and Great High Priesthood (Psalm 110; Heb. 2:17; 8:1).
The Christian’s accusers are not only Satan but his human enemies and of course his sins.
The Christian is eternally secure since his sins, which offend a holy God have been dealt with at the cross and he has been rendered justified by the Father because of his faith in Jesus Christ.
The Christian’s failure to keep perfectly God’s Law cannot condemn the Christian to the eternal lake of fire since Christ who the Christian placed his faith in, has fulfilled perfectly the righteous requirements of the Law through His perfect obedience to it.
If a holy God who hates sin has pardoned the Christian through faith in Jesus Christ as Savior, then the Christian need not fear that his sins after accepting Christ as Savior might cause him to lose his salvation since this same holy God has declared the Christian justified through faith in Christ and has accepted the Christian solely on the merits of His Son Jesus Christ.
In Romans 8:33, the verb enkaleo means, “to make a formal accusation in court.”
In this rhetorical question that demands a negative assertion Paul is teaching his Christian readers in Rome that there is no human being or angel that can make a formal charge or accusation against them in the courtroom of heaven and have it stick.
Romans 8:33, “Who will bring a charge against God's elect? God is the one who justifies.”
“God’s elect” is composed of the genitive masculine plural form of the adjective eklektos (e)klektov$) (ek-lek-tos), “elect” and the genitive masculine singular form of the noun theos (qeov$) (theh-os), “God’s.”
The noun theos refers to the Father since Paul teaches in Romans 8:28 that the “chosen ones,” i.e. Christians were elected according to the Father’s predetermined plan.
Further indicating that the Father is in view is that Paul teaches in Ephesians 1:3-4 that the Father elected the Christian to privilege in eternity past before the foundation of the world.
Ephesians 1:3-4, “Worthy of praise and glorification is the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the One who has blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies in the Person of Christ. When He elected us to privilege in Him before the foundation of the world for the purpose of being holy and blameless before Him.”
In Romans 8:33, the adjective eklektos is composed of the preposition ek, “out from” and the verb lego, “to call,” thus the word literally means, “called out ones” or even “chosen out ones.”
In the Greek New Testament, the word is used to describe church age believers (Romans 8:33; 16:13; Colossians 3:12; 2 Timothy 2:10; Titus 1:1; 1 Peter 1:1; 2:4, 6, 9; 2 John 1, 13) and elect angels (1 Timothy 5:21).
Therefore, in Romans 8:33 the adjective eklektos means, “called out ones” or “chosen-out ones” and is used of church age believers.
Church age believers are “chosen-out ones” or “called out ones” since they have been called or chosen out from the earth’s inhabitants who are enslaved to the sin nature and the devil and his cosmic system.
It is directly related to the doctrine of election just as the adjective kletos in Romans 8:28.
Like the adjective kletos, the adjective eklektos is always used in Scripture of believers and never unbelievers.
Election is never used in Scripture in relation to the unbeliever since 1 Timothy 2:4 and 2 Peter 3:9 teach that God desires all men to be saved.
God elected the believer before the foundation of the world since He knew beforehand that the believer would accept Jesus Christ as Savior in time and therefore elected the believer to privilege.
Election means that God has a plan for your life, which is to be conformed to the image of Christ.
God elected us before the foundation of the world in the sense that God, in His foreknowledge, which is based upon His omniscience, knew before anything was ever created, that we would believe in His Son in time.
Therefore, He elected us to the privilege of entering into fellowship with Him based upon the merits of our union with Christ.
The believer’s election to privilege is a gift and irrevocable.
Romans 11:29, “for the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable.”
Election is based upon God’s grace policy meaning that the believer does not merit his election but rather receives it based upon the merits of the Lord Jesus Christ and His finished work on the Cross.
Romans 8:33, “Who will bring a charge against God's elect? God is the one who justifies.”
“God” is the nominative masculine singular form of the noun theos (qeov$), which refers to God the Father since in context Paul is explaining the Father’s predetermined plan for the Christian to be conformed to the image of Jesus Christ.
“The one who justifies” is the articular nominative masculine present active participle form of the verb dikaioo (dikaiovw) (dik-ah-yo-o), which means, “to declare or pronounce righteous.”
This is the fourteenth time that we have seen this word in our studies of the book of Romans (Romans 2:13; 3:4, 20, 24, 26, 28, 30; 4:2, 5; 5:1, 9; 6:7).
In every instance, except for Romans 3:4, where it is used with God as the object, the word refers to the doctrine of justification.
Now, once again, in Romans 8:33, the verb dikaioo refers to the doctrine of justification, which by way of definition is a judicial act of God whereby He declares a person to be righteous as a result of crediting or imputing to that person His righteousness the moment they exercised faith in His Son Jesus Christ.
Consequently, God accepts that person and enters that person into a relationship with Himself since they now possess His righteousness.
The mechanics of justification are as follows: (1) God condemns the sinner, which qualifies them to receive His grace. (2) The sinner believes in Jesus Christ as His Savior. (3) God imputes or credits Christ’s righteousness to the believer. (4) God declares that person as righteous as a result of acknowledging His Son’s righteousness in that person.
Justification is God declaring a person to be righteous as a result of acknowledging or recognizing His righteousness in that person, and which righteousness He imputed to that person as a result of their faith in His Son, Jesus Christ.
It is a once and for all declaration, which never changes or can be rescinded since God is a perfect Judge who because He is immutable, always makes perfect decisions.
Justification causes no one to be righteous but rather is the recognition and declaration by God that one is righteous as He is.
To be justified by God through faith alone in Christ alone means that God can never condemn us for our sins.
It means that a believer can never lose his salvation because of any sin since God, who is a perfect judge, rendered a perfect decision when he declared righteous the person, who exercised faith in His Son Jesus Christ!
Thus, Paul declares the following in Romans 8:1: “Therefore, there is now, as an eternal spiritual truth, never any condemnation, none whatsoever for the benefit of those in union with Christ who is Jesus.”