Romans
8:31-34 (NASB)
31What then shall we say
to these things? If God is for us, who is against us? 32He 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? 33Who will bring a charge
against God's elect? God is the one who justifies; 34who 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.
Position
of Power
Paul continues to taut this amazing
salvation before his audience. Having
just spelled out, again, the completeness of our salvation, there is more
wonderful news ahead. We found that our
salvation is rooted in eternity and that each and every believer was known by
the eternal God even before He said, “Let there be light…” The last verses
highlighted how believers are foreknown, given a destiny (to be conformed to
the image of Christ), Called, Justified, and that our glorification with Christ
is equally as certain a fact. Notice,
again that this is all what God is doing and not what we do. But Paul drives this point home throughout
this chapter and hasn’t finished letting us know what an amazing thing it is to
be “in Christ.”
Romans
8:31
What then shall we say to these
things? If God is for us, who is against
us?
What
to say?
These verses continue the argument by
evaluating what our reaction should be.
As the argument here gets more and more passionate rhetorical questions
are used. The rhetorical question is
Paul’s way of involving the reader in the discussion. He is asking the reader to engage with what
he is saying, trying to get each of us to actually accept and apply this
important truth. Having just told them
how amazing their present and future in Christ are, Paul wants them to think it
over. Many of us will easily assent when
we hear something said, or read anything, but Paul wants engagement because we
can often nod our head and say “Yes, yes” and not realize that we held some
other belief that conflicts with the new belief.
Paul knows that grace is scary to
those who long to achieve something, or wish to show off in one way or
another. Paul has dealt with every
objection to God’s grace. He dealt with
the “If we are under grace we can sin all we want” in chapter 6. In chapter 7 he dealt with, “Can’t we just
earn righteousness through the law?” In
chapter 8 he dealt with our constant, moment by moment need for Jesus Christ,
for the Holy Spirit.
If
God is for us…
“If” here may seem like Paul is not
sure. However, the context supplies the
nature of this “if”. The fact that “God
is for us” has already been proven in the verses before this. This was proven in the fact that God is the
author of every phase of our salvation.
Our salvation is of God! It is
His doing, not ours!
Wait!
God is FOR us?!
This is too big to miss. So often we fall back into the pagan mindset
that God is either against us, or at least impartial. How often do we have a view of God as being
seated on the Heavenly throne, looking down and waiting for us to mess up? When we sin, stumble, goof up, or make
mistakes we very commonly view God as changing in His attitude towards us and
now trying to destroy us. Get this…it is
huge. GOD IS FOR YOU.
God is on your side. He won this
salvation for you, He has given you everything that you need for life and
godliness. You are not going to succeed
in your walk with Christ because of what you do, but because of what HE has
done and is doing and is yet to do. You
can go into each day with the confidence unmatched by anything because the God
who has ultimate and final control over all situations and final outcomes is
FOR YOU! He is on your side. Grab onto this promise with both hands. You will need it, because the world is not
for us. It is against us. We will likely see many difficulties and
disappointments that lead us to believe that God has abandoned us, but this is
never the case. God is, and always will
be, for you.
Who
can be against us?
The answer to Paul’s rhetorical
question is clear. However, it should be
examined. What other force might we
think could draw this amazing promise and work of God into question? We may sight our flesh, or trembling will,
the world system, the Devil and those demons who fell with him. All of these forces ARE working against us
and against our sanctification and glorification. If they had only to defeat us
in order to rob us of our salvation not one person could be saved. These forces are far beyond our ability to
stand against. We cannot defeat the
world on our own. We certainly do not
have the power in ourselves to defeat the devil (once among the most powerful
of created beings). However, we need not
even go that far. As Romans 6-7 show
even our flesh defeats us and get the better of us when we attempt to deal with
them on our own. Fortunately, those
forces are not working against us, they are working against God. We feel loss and frustration when we try to
do God’s part and fight those battles on our own. While they may deceive us, they will NEVER
defeat God. This is a question of
absolute and final power and authority, and no person (whether ourselves, or
any angelic power) can compare, or compete, with the power of our God.
Romans
8:32
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?
All
too often misquoted
We often here politicians complaining
“I was misquoted.” However, no single
source in the history of the world could have been so repeatedly misquoted as
the Bible. This verse is among the more
common misquotes. This verse is often
said to mean, “God gave up His Son for us, so he will also provide for all of
your physical needs.” This perversion
sometimes goes so far as to say “God is going to give you whatever you
WANT.” Neither of which is a true
statement, biblically speaking. As we
look at this verse we have to remember the context: our salvation and spiritual
growth.
Not
Spare
When it came to creating this
salvation it is noticeable that God gave EVERYTHING He had, used His very best
resource to create it for us. He didn’t
just speak it into existence. He
actually sent His own Son. This is
remarkable. When we think of a child of
a rich father we can imagine the child making tons of messes and the father
using his wealth to clean up after him.
However, the child may actually be affected if his father were to
personally interfere in the situation.
Jesus Christ personally came down and put on flesh and became as one of
us. There is no fuller expression of
God’s love and character than the person of Jesus Christ.
This may recall Abraham to our
minds. In Genesis 22 God tells Abraham
to sacrifice his only son, Isaac. Isaac
was a miracle baby, born to two people who were well past the age of
fertility. Yet the Lord had been
faithful to His promise and given them this child. Then God tells Abraham to sacrifice
Isaac. As Abraham prepares to make this
sacrifice he collects Isaac and tells him to come along. When they approach the site Isaac asked,
“Where is the lamb for the sacrifice?”
Abraham says, “God will provide the lamb.” God interfered, and spared Abraham’s son,
Isaac. Then they found a ram whose horns
were caught in a thicket. God didn’t
provide the Lamb for thousands of years, until Christ was crucified for our
sins.
What
has been done, and what will be done…
Paul explained how God delivered
Christ up for our sake. There is nothing
of value equal to Christ. When we think
of the uncharitable value of Jesus Christ, the Son of God that is the price
that God paid for our salvation. Having
paid all of this for salvation will God let that salvation fail? Of course not! He has provided for us fully in every phase
of salvation. This is not a promise of
physical things, or even basic physical necessities. A believer may die of
starvation, martyrdom or any other horrible death, however, we never lack a
single spiritual resource. As Paul put
this in Ephesians 1:3 God has “blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the
heavenlies with Christ.”
God giving us everything we need for
our salvation isn’t all that is said here:
the way that it was given is also explained. God won’t give us everything we need for our
growth in Christ begrudgingly, but rather “freely”! God isn’t saying, “I gave my Son for you and
now you figure the rest out.” Paul
describes God attitude as saying, “I am pouring EVERYTHING into this. I gave you my son, and now I have given you
the word, the Holy Spirit, I am working through your trials and all of your
circumstances. I am hearing your prayers
and my hand is not off of you for a single moment. I will succeed. And I do it gladly, freely, because I love
you and want to see you conformed to the image of my Son. Failure is not a possibility.”
Romans
8:33-34
33Who will bring a charge
against God's elect? God is the one who justifies; 34who 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.
More
Questions
Paul continues with His method of
asking rhetorical questions. This is
meant to challenge the reader to answer the question and interact with what
Paul is writing, and find that the statement is absolutely true!
Who
will bring a charge?
Paul is not talking about an
electrical charge. Paul is using legal language to describe a spiritual
situation. Who will bring the believer
before the court on charges? Who could
do this? Satan? He is the “accuser of the brethren”. Other people?
They may think that they have an argument or evidence against a
believer. The only logical person who
could bring up a charge that would stick would be God Himself! Yet He is the
One Who gave His Son to pay the penalty for sin! Satan has no reasonable accusation of the
believer because Christ always returns with the same response: “Perhaps my child did sin, but I paid for
that at the Cross.” The one who paid the
price constantly stands before the Father “interceding” for us. This is our amazing salvation! This is what we are given in the person and
work of Jesus Christ our Lord.
Identification
It is worth mentioning that anyone
who has placed their faith in Jesus Christ for salvation has also been included
with Jesus Christ by God in every one of these processes! Both in Romans 6:4-6
and Ephesians 2:4-6 clearly state that every believer has been identified with
Christ in His death, burial, resurrection, ascension and seating. Having been placed in Christ and imputed his
righteousness we are united with Him in His glory. This is a tremendous reality for us to understand!
4Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into
death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the
Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. 5For if we have
become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall also be
in the likeness of His resurrection, 6knowing this, that our old
self was crucified with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away
with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin; 7for he who has
died is freed from sin.
Romans
6:4-7 NASB
4But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love
with which He loved us, 5even when we were dead in our
transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been
saved), 6and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the
heavenly places in Christ Jesus, 7so that in the ages to come He
might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ
Jesus.
Ephesians
2:4-7 NASB
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