Romans 8

Romans 8:5-27

Subdivision 4. (Romans 8:5-27.)The walk in the Spirit. The principles of a walk in the Spirit are now set before us. As already said, we shall still find the flesh present and in opposition. Conflict there is still, but captivity no more, and even conflict is, if I may say so, no more the normal condition of the Christian in this respect. Enjoying my own things, I find a sphere into which flesh cannot and will not enter. It was not in the third heavens that the apostle needed a thorn for the flesh: it was when he came down out of them. And true it is that we thus find ourselves in conflict, how much I need not say, but the Spirit of God has not set before us, as it were, the duty of conflict with the flesh or with its lusts.

We are to “abstain from fleshly lusts which war against the soul.” That is not the same as warring with them. If we are entangled, if our eyes have been allowed to rest upon something not of God, which has attracted them, then indeed there will be of necessity a struggle, but the being entangled was not a necessity, and it is a totally different thing to be reckoning oneself dead to sin and to be fighting it. We fight it when we have allowed it, when we have not been reckoning ourselves dead to it. There is, of course, a conflict with sin in the world around, a conflict which the Lord Himself had of necessity, because of what He was, but of which we are not speaking here. “Ye have not yet resisted unto blood,” says the apostle to the Hebrews, “fighting against sin;” but that, of course, is not the, sin in us, it is the sin which characterizes the world around us, the corruption which is in it through lust.

1. The first thing, therefore, that is now put before us is the governing power. “They that are according to flesh, mind the things of the flesh, and they that are according to Spirit, the things of the Spirit.” The flesh seeks what is according to its mind, and the Spirit seeks what is according to His mind; but notice now, that these two are two companies. “They that are according to flesh” cannot, of course, be confounded with those that are according to the Spirit. The Spirit is for the Christian the One who has come to possess us in Christ’s name and for Him; and in Him we find a power which is not of ourselves, and which leaves us still and all the way through, in conscious weakness. This is a great necessity for us, that the power should be power which is fully available for us and yet which is not our own, for the realization of which we have to lean upon Another. It is when we are weak, then we are strong. The sense of weakness is most helpful to us every way.

It not only checks all self-complacent thoughts, but it makes us realize in the strength which is constantly ministered to us, the continual care and love of God. We can promise ourselves nothing even yet as to ourselves, and we need not promise anything. We need only the assurance that the love which holds us fast has all things in its control, and that in Christ there is fulness for us from which we can draw at all times. Thus, as has already been said, the “I myself” has really disappeared. The knowledge of the new man is that Christ is all. Faith does not know itself, and its object is never self. 2. The opposition between the two, the Spirit and the flesh, is now put before us. “The mind of the flesh,” not “the carnal mind” as if it were a fleeting condition, but what the flesh is in its character at all times, “is death.” “The mind of the flesh is enmity against God”; that is death truly. Death is separation from the source of life, and the flesh is willingly separate. Thus then, it “is not subject to the law of God neither indeed can be,” and “they that are in the flesh cannot please God.” “In the flesh” we find here, therefore, to be a spiritual condition, although it is related to the old creation place out of which we have passed. One who is in Christ cannot be in the flesh. On the other hand, the mind of the Spirit is life and peace.

How blessed a thing is such peace! At one with God, everything else is at one with us. All things of necessity, therefore, “work together for good to them that love” Him. “If God be for us, who can be against us?” 3. But immediately we are assured, “ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you.” This which has put us in the condition here is not to be looked at as if it were possible to be absent from the child of God. We are immediately warned “if any one have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of His.” There are no Christians that are not Christ’s, and here, in fact, we are assured that the Spirit of God is found in all who are such. He is the seal upon those who belong to God. The word is not found here: we must look for it in Ephesians; but the idea is clearly expressed. A seal is the mark put upon what is one’s own, with the idea of inviolability attaching to it. The 144,000 sealed out of all the tribes of Israel in the book of Revelation are a sample of this. They are sealed on their foreheads, and we find afterwards that the Name of the Lamb and of His Father is written there, evidently the effect of the sealing. This Name is their preservative from the power of the locusts in the ninth chapter. “Seals were employed,” says Kitto, “not for the purpose of impressing a device on wax, but in place of a sign manual to stamp the name of the owner upon any document to which he determined to fix it.” The Lord expressly speaks of the descent of the Spirit upon Himself as His being sealed of God the Father. It was then, we know, that His being the Son was fully declared.

The seal was the witness of emphatic approbation. In us it is also the token of sonship. The Spirit bears witness with our spirit that we are the children of God, but with us there cannot, of course, be the approbation of a condition in us, but rather of Him in whom we are recognized as standing before God. Thus, it is not by sealing that we are made to be in Christ. We must be in Christ in order to be sealed. God could not put His seal upon the least evil, the least taint of sin.

We are in Christ, moreover, as the apostle says in the epistle to the Corinthians, by new creation. “If any one be in Christ, it is new creation”; and he adds, as what connects itself with it: “Old things are passed away, behold all things are become new.” As soon as ever the work begins in us, we belong to that new creation which abides in the value of its blessed Head before God; and thus alone could it be said that “old things are passed away.” In Ephesians we find also that we are “created in Christ Jesus.” Creation speaks of the divine work in us from the very beginning. It is, however, said that in this case, the “none of His” should be rather “not of Him,” which is confessedly the literal rendering; and that this refers to a condition not attained by all in whom divine work has begun. The way ill which simple belonging to Christ would be expressed, it is said, would be, “He is not to Him” instead of “of Him”; but in the second chapter of the second epistle to Timothy, we find the same expression exactly where most certainly the whole extent of those belonging to Him is intended to be expressed. “The Lord knoweth them that are His,” “those that are of Him”; where, amid all the confusion of a day in which profession and reality are inextricably confused for us, the Lord yet unfailingly recognizes His own. Thus, in every way, it is clear that the seal marks out those who are children of God, and that therefore it can be fully said that if any one have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of His. There is no middle condition, however confused the experience may be, or dull the faith in a child of God. Let us notice the way in which the Spirit is set before us here. First, it is the Spirit of God that dwells in us. Divine power thus keeps us for Him; but next, we have the Spirit of Christ, the One who glorifies Christ and who produces in us also a likeness to Him. Following this, we have, “If Christ be in you”; for the Spirit, in fact, as glorifying Christ, does not testify of Himself. It is not, therefore, the Spirit in you, but Christ in you. This, however, is the expression of life itself, as we have already seen abundantly in the Gospel of John.

The Lord’s parable of the vine and the branches conveys to us fully the relation between one in Christ and Christ in him The branch is in the vine; as a consequence, the sap is in the branch. The sap is the life derived from the vine stock. So here, “Christ in you” is the expression of life; but then to this the Spirit alone gives its proper energy. We have already seen this fully in the experience of the seventh chapter, where, although life in fact is, yet it is not in its proper power. Thus, it is said here, that the Spirit is life. As we have seen all the way through here, the “I myself,” as it were, drops out.

It is the Spirit who is the governing power, the Leader; and the attitude of faith is that of entire dependence upon Him. “If Christ be in you,” then, the apostle says, “the body still is dead because of sin, but the Spirit is life because of righteousness.” The body has not yet the effect of redemption manifested in it. It is not yet quickened. Quickening is to come. “If the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, He who raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies on account of His Spirit who dwelleth in you.” That is the redemption for which we wait. In the meanwhile, the body is to be reckoned simply as an instrument in the hands of the spiritual man. If it manifests its individual life that will be seen, and so the apostle speaks directly of our mortifying the deeds of the body. Not that the body and the flesh are the same thing: the flesh may include, as we have seen, spirit and soul, the whole man; and moreover, necessarily describes an evil condition.

The body is not in itself evil, and spite of the condition in which it is yet found, it is in the body that the Spirit of God dwells. (See 1 Corinthians 6:19.) Our bodies are the temples of the Holy Spirit. We see fully how the work of Christ enables thus the taking up of that in which there is not yet the power of redemption.

This will reflect again upon the experience that we have had in the previous chapter. If the Spirit can dwell in a body that is dead and that clearly through the work of Christ alone, in the same way the Spirit can dwell surely in one who is not yet in the mind of the Spirit, who needs to be delivered from the power of evil, the law of sin in his members. But “the body is dead on account of sin, while the Spirit is life on account of righteousness,” -evidently the righteousness which the Spirit produces. Nothing but that which is righteous before God could possibly be counted “life.” We go on to the coming of Christ for the deliverance: “He who raised up Christ from among the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies on account of His Spirit who dwelleth in you.” The pledge has been given us in Christ’s own resurrection. Notice, however," that it is not exactly resurrection as to ourselves that is spoken of. Our “mortal bodies” implies a stage of the living and not of the dead, and quickening is that which delivers them from the state of mortality.

The reason of this is plain. We are not taught, as people commonly put it, that we must all die.

On the contrary, our proper state is to be waiting for the Lord. Thus here, the quickening of the mortal body refers distinctly to those who shall be living when He comes, and for them the Spirit who already dwells in the body, makes good His title to it in the most absolute way. The Spirit is, as we see all through, the earnest of that which is to come. Here then, is the complete answer to the question: “Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” Complete deliverance is what we wait for and yet that does not in the least imply any necessity of sin in the present time. The presence of the Spirit in us is, of course, fulness of power over it, and the delivered man who is in the power of the Spirit works out the righteousness of the law. Whatever we may have to say with regard to ourselves, in fact, we have ever the responsibility of walking in the power of the Spirit, and therefore, as those free from the power of sin. 4. The practical test is now found here again. As we have seen, it is freedom that tests, not bondage. The slave does his master’s will; the freeman does his own; and yet even in the state of bondage which has been described to us, the will of the converted man is testified to be for God and good. Freedom is the only thing that is needed by him. The heart to serve God and to please Him he already has.

Thus, amongst the professing people of God, freedom, as already said, is the test of reality. There is a way of life and a way of death. The gospel does not alter that, but, on the contrary confirms it. “So, then, brethren, we are debtors not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh, for if ye live according to the flesh, ye are on the way to die.” That is spoken absolutely: we have no need to qualify it in the least. If a man lives “according to the flesh,” it does not say, “acts” at a given time, but if he lives, if that is the tenor of his life, “according to the flesh,” then he is on the road to death. On the other hand, if a man has the Spirit, by the Spirit he mortifies the deeds of the body. The body is held for dead.

It is used and can be fully used for God. There is not the least thought of asceticism in the apostle’s language here. God has no pleasure in a man’s ill-treating his body. On the contrary, it is meant to be maintained in vigor for the Lord who owns it, and yet it is to be the mere dead instrument, so to speak, of Another’s will. “If ye through the Spirit mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live.” There is no other way. That marks out, as alone this can mark out, the sons of God. But, notice the beautiful difference between what is said here upon the one side and upon the other. If men live according to the flesh, they are on the way to death. It does not say that they will die. God’s grace is always free to come in, but then if it comes in it takes one off the road to death; it does not speak in such a manner as if sin were of no consequence. On the other hand, if, by the Spirit, you mortify the deeds of the body, not, you are on the way to life, because there is no uncertainty about the result, but “you shall live.” Of course, the full and final result is intended there. We live at the present time and we shall go on to live forever.

Thus then, the sons of God are marked out. We are called to enforce the condition which the apostle has made so absolute, whatever we may speak of grace or of faith, -and we cannot enforce these too absolutely when we are speaking of them, -yet, on the other hand, we must be just as absolute as to the way of life and the way of death. We have no right, whatever the profession may be, to consider any one as a son of God whose life does not mark him out as devoted to God. 5. But then the spirit of all this has to be carefully kept in mind. What the apostle has said might tend to produce a spirit of bondage -the fear of the result, of the issue, in unestablished souls, -but he says: “Ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear.” Legality is not at all what is implied here, and it does not and cannot produce the holiness which it claims and seeks; nor can it secure for itself the final result. Take our Lord’s words, for instance, in proof of this. “Whosoever will save His life shall lose it, but whosoever will lose his life for My sake, the same shall save it.” There is the condition, the marking out, as here, of the way of life and the way of death. But it is not simply, whosoever will lose his life shall save it, but “whosoever will lose his life for My sake.” Clearly that is not the legal principle. As long as a man doubts his final security, he will, of necessity, be working for himself, but that is not “for My sake.” The legal gospel, whatever spice of legality may come into it, is so far unholy, and can be nothing but unholy.

We live as Christians, not to ourselves, but to Him who died for us and rope again"; but there is a religious way of living to one’s self which is just as fully that as any course of sin and self-indulgence. Thus here, therefore, we are expressly told that there is no spirit of fear for the Christian, but, on the other hand, we have received the Spirit of adoption, by which we cry, “Abba, Father.” It is the heart renewed and realizing the power of the grace of God which “teaches us to deny ungodliness and worldly lusts and to live soberly, righteously and godly in this present world.” The witness of the Spirit with our spirit, therefore, is dwelt upon here.

A double witness; there is the witness of our own spirit, and that is implied, here in the first place. The spirit of man is that which makes him an intelligent being. “No one knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him.” Here, therefore, the testimony of the Word, as understood and received is that which is really implied. The apostle has been in the fullest way unfolding to us this testimony, and we are not left merely, as it were, to reasoning out things; we are not left merely to our own intelligence in the matter; nor even simply to faith. We need that which is more powerful than this, and we have it in that witness of the Spirit with our spirit, which indeed, we may be little able to distinguish from the witness produced by faith in the gospel, but which gives divine power to this witness. The witness of the Spirit in this way produces a full consciousness of what God is to us, while, at the same time it is founded and must be founded upon the word of God itself. We must have the Word in proof, or we are entitled to nothing.

The Spirit of God acts from and with the Word, never sets it aside, and therefore whatever “feeling” there may be, as people are accustomed to say, all this can be questioned. If it is not justified by the word of God itself, it will not do to talk of the witness of the Spirit.

The two, therefore, come together, the Spirit of God and our spirit. Faith receives God’s testimony in the Word, and the Spirit of God joins to this a divine power which otherwise it would not have. We cry, “Abba, Father”; we serve with the joyful consciousness that we serve as children, -the most absolute service that can possibly be; for the Father has entire claim to His child; but at the same time where there is, as in this case there must of necessity be, the true affection of children, the service is itself liberty. Thus then, the Spirit bears witness that we are the children of God; but immense consequences follow. If children, we are heirs. As with regard to God, this might be even thought to be out of place. We inherit from our parents that which is left us when they pass away; but God never passes away. How are we to be His heirs? Only He, Himself, could have inspired such a thought as this. If we want to realize what it means, we have a beautiful example of it in the case of Israel, whose land is expressly claimed to be God’s land. They are to be pilgrims and sojourners with Him, thus put into possession on His part, to hold that which is nevertheless His.

How perfect the security that is given in this way to their possession of it! When they shall hold it after this manner, how impossible for them to lose it again, and even now the land being God’s renders it absolutely impossible that any failure on their part can disturb His purposes with regard to it. They might forfeit it. If it were left to them, they surely would, altogether; but God cannot forfeit it, and if He puts them in possession of that which is His own, then they have an unfailing right to that possession. So with regard to our higher and more wonderful inheritance. We are heirs of God. The things that He has created, He has not created for Himself. He has no need of them.

His whole heart goes with the gift of them to His people, yet so that in the sense in which we have spoken, the things inherited remain always God’s, while we possess and enjoy them fully. There is another thing added here. We are joint heirs with Christ. How wonderfully does this certify to us the extent of the inheritance! Christ is the heir of all things, and to be joint heirs with Christ gives, as one may say, the thought of a limitless inheritance; but not merely so, it assures us of the perfect way in which Christ abides still and ever the Man Christ Jesus. He means to associate us with Himself for ever. The joy of the inheritance will be the joy of being associated with Christ in it. But then immediately there comes in what may seem to be a condition; “If so be that we suffer with Him, that we may be also glorified with Him.” Suffering then is necessary to glory, but surely not in any sense as a legal condition, -the suffering with Him, not mere suffering in itself, but suffering with Him, suffering as He suffered in the world which was contrary to Him entirely, suffering because of the knowledge of God and joy in Him which were His ever, in view of evil and all its consequences: this, on our part, is the necessary training for that association with Him, of which our being joint heirs speaks. We are preparing to have fully His mind, learning in the midst of evil, learning what evil is in its Ml character even in ourselves, as we have already seen. In ourselves we are brought into the closest possible connection with it, surely that we may realize forever its nature, that we may hate it as God hates it, and that we may be fully competent to walk with Him who has solved in His own person the whole question of good and evil, and who is the glorious Conqueror over sin by suffering. Thus then, our present lives have a meaning with reference to the future which we must never lose sight of. The suffering by the way is part of our very need, in order that we may be fit for the coming glory. But, as already said, we must not think of this as mere suffering, but, as with Christ Himself, that which was most truly such to Him sprang out of the very joy that He had in God (we are not speaking of atonement now, or that which was necessary for it), -so for us, suffering must have this character. It must put us ever in fellowship with Him in order to be of any value. 6. Immediately upon this, the apostle goes on to speak more at large of the character of the present time for us. It is a time of travail. Creation itself is groaning in the bondage of corruption. It waits for liberty. It waits for the manifestation of the sons of God.

Connected with man as its head, the fall of man has brought about this groaning condition. Notice that in himself man is a microcosm. He has the soul of the beast. He has the very dust of the earth in him. He is linked in the fullest possible way with creation throughout, and how blessed it is to realize that in this way Christ, in taking humanity, has linked Himself even, one may say, with the very material universe. How this assures us that it cannot lie under the condition which the fall has produced.

There is yet to be a liberty for it. The liberty of grace it could not enjoy, but the liberty of the glory it shall enjoy. The typical character which we find everywhere in nature connects itself with all this. It is a remarkable thing that even before man was upon the earth, death seems to have reigned in it, and that this for the lower creation is in no wise (chronologically) the effect of the fall. Man was created in a world which, so to Speak, prophesied of that fall itself and was prepared for him by the goodness of God in view of it. Thus, if you look at nature, you will find not a condition such as we would imagine. Strife and evil (not moral evil, surely) are in every part of it; and thus alone could it present to man the lessons which he needs, but of which, alas, he is so little heedful. The witness of Christ in creation comes in in this connection.

God has given us, in the most abundant way thus, a testimony of nature itself, which does not leave out His purposes of grace, but, on the contrary, bears fullest. witness to them. Natural theology has been, alas, but too much divorced from this. Nature has been supposed simply to bear witness in the characters of design which are everywhere in it, of a Maker, a Creator. A Saviour has been supposed to be what lies beyond its testimony; but thus it has been made, if one may so say, more pagan than Christian. How could God Himself be rightly expressed in it, if Christ be not expressed? But this, as already said, involves the very evil and strife winch we find in it.

God has in all this, wrought for us, and nature is linked with us in its present groanings, as it will by and by be linked with us also in its redemption. “For we, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption,” that is, the full manifestation of what we are as sons of God, now hidden. That involves the body being glorified. We wait, therefore, for the adoption, that is, the redemption of the body. The firstfruits of the Spirit would seem to imply that after all what we possess in this way is but a pledge in anticipation of that which is to come, and we who have the first-fruits of the Spirit, on that very account, are made to groan. The hope we have of a condition so different from the present makes us only the more groan over the present. Our salvation is in hope, as to the full character of it.

Of course, there is a salvation of which we can say already that God hath saved us. If it be a question simply of guilt and condemnation, then we are already completely saved; but salvation is very commonly looked at in a very different way from this, and it implies deliverance of the body itself and the fulfilment of all God’s purposes as to us. We are saved now in hope, but then that means that we have not got before us that which we hope for. If we behold it, how can we still hope for it? “If we hope for what we behold not, then do we with patience wait for it.” How beautiful a thought it is that this hope is so perfect, there is such complete assurance with regard to it, that the not having it only produces patience in us -not doubt, but patience! All human hopes may possibly disappoint, but die hope which God has given us is as sure as if we already possessed it. We wait with patience, and the patience itself is holy discipline for us.

We wait upon His will, but all that He can give us in the way of assurance is already ours. 7. We have now finally, in this part, the Spirit Himself entering into this groaning condition. The Spirit joins His help to our infirmity. In such a condition of trial and sorrow, our weakness is made fully evident, but that only opens to us more the heart of God and produces in us a healthful dependence upon Him every step of the way. Notice, therefore, that in connection with the Spirit helping our infirmities, prayer is that upon which the apostle dwells. Prayer is the expression of dependence. It is the expression of the creature-place which we have with God. It is the expression, also, if it be that which can rightly be called prayer, of our confidence in God.

Prayer is thus, as one may say, a large part of the Christian life, or rather, it is that which links itself with every part of it. If the Lord, in the sermon on the mount, would give us a special example of righteousness Godward, He illustrates this by prayer; but the very prayer itself manifests our infirmity. We do not know even what to pray for as we ought. How blessed to know that here we have a divine Intercessor; as we have Christ before God for us, so we have the Spirit of God in us, and He makes intercession for us according to God. The prayer that He makes is, of course, absolutely according to God; yet as wrought in our hearts it may be on that very account simply a groaning which cannot be uttered intelligibly, -a wonderful thing to realize that these groanings which are the evidence of our own infirmity may, nevertheless, be the fruit of the Spirit within us; that in the ear of God they may speak intelligently, and in absolute accordance with His mind concerning us. We do not know what to pray for, and yet we pray; and God who searcheth the hearts knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit, little as we may know it and blunder as we may. “He maketh intercession for the saints according to God.” That does not mean simply that it is God’s will that He should make the intercession, as our common version might lead some to suppose, but that the intercession itself, as being; His, is of necessity in complete accordance with His thought and character.

We are not, however, to suppose by all this, that the Spirit’s prayer is simply groaning. The groaning accompanies the prayer and is part of the prayer. “With groanings that cannot be uttered.” Nevertheless, these groanings express, as it were, after all, that which is higher in character, it may be, than the very prayers themselves, however intelligent.

Our intelligence fails to accompany them. They go beyond it. But if they go beyond it, all the more they express the power of the Spirit in them -of Him who has come to join His help to our infirmities, and to carry us along the lighted road which leads to God.

Romans 8:28-39

Subdivision 5. (Romans 8:28-39.)The weak with the Strong. The apostle concludes here with the assurance of the result for us of being thus with God, the weak with the strong. His purpose is being carried out in us and with us, and who shall gainsay it? Thus with the boldness which is simply that of faith, he can challenge everything, the whole universe, to disappoint this purpose.

1. The purpose itself is put clearly before us. Christ is of necessity in the forefront of it, and thus its justification, and the full assurance that it will be carried out. “We know that to those who love God all things work together for good, to those who are the called according to purpose.” The present is linked with the future in a most absolute way. From God’s foreknowledge of us in the past eternity to the accomplished glory of the future, there is a perfectly linked chain of blessing, no link of which can ever be sundered. God’s purpose is that Christ His Son, should be a First-born among many brethren. How blessed to see the grace which is necessarily manifested when Christ is thus in the forefront!

It is not here, therefore, the “Only-Begotten,” of whom the apostle speaks. The Son is that; but He is here in human guise, a “Firstborn,” which implies others, and that is clearly expressed. He is found thus with those whom He is not ashamed to call His brethren. God’s purpose, therefore, includes, of necessity, these. If it failed as to the brethren, it would fail as to the Son of His love. They are bound up together in His thoughts. We have, therefore, strong words here, words that are often somewhat too strong for the faith of His people. “Whom He foreknew, He also fore-ordained to be conformed to the image of His Son.” If Christ is, on the one hand, the image of God Himself, (and He alone can be that in the reality of all that is implied,) yet we are to be conformed to His image. That is God’s purpose as to us. He could not surely be without a purpose, and having the purpose, He could not be without the power of carrying this through. What comfort would there be for us in the midst of such a world as this, if it were not so? if God had not a purpose, or if He had one which could be set aside by man’s self-will? How blessed, when we know Himself, when we realize that His will is but the expression of His perfect nature, how blessed then to see His will in all its sovereignty! We may be sure, too, that He will respect all the powers with which He has endued His creatures.

He will do violence to nothing, but while this is surely so, He will carry out in the most absolute way every part of His purpose. This is definitely asserted here. “Whom He foreordained, these He also called; whom He called, He justified; whom He justified, He glorified.” It is remarkable here that there is one thing left out which we should expect perhaps to have a foremost place. After justification, we are accustomed to say, comes sanctification, but where is sanctification here? We are indeed to be conformed to the image of His Son, and that, one may say, implies it fully; but in the chain of blessing which we are looking at now, sanctification seems, surely purposely, to be omitted; for it is just here that, alas, we perplex ourselves with all sorts of questions. We make of a condition, a doubt; and the legality natural to us will seek to intrude at any possible point; but between justification and glory here, there is absolutely no room left for it to come in. Notice that we begin with fore-knowledge. None surely can deny this to Him. He could not create, plainly, not knowing the future of what He was creating. If He foreknew, then He could not possibly be without a will with regard to the future of that which He had created. Fore-ordination follows, therefore, foreknowledge. He will have things to be according to His own mind.

From this, our calling follows, which is here, of course, not the general call of the gospel, not a call that can be refused at all, but on the other hand, the creative call, as God says by the prophet: “I call them, they stand up together”; and, as we see here, those who are called are justified. No one drops out. Justification follows the call. Identified as it is, and as we have seen, with the life which follows this, if one is called in this way to spiritual life, justification can never be apart front this. We are justified from the first moment, with the first breath that we draw of true life from God. Then notice that “glorified” seems to be put in the past, just as much as “justified.” It is the style of the prophets, -everything contemplated from God’s side, and, therefore, although in fact to be accomplished, yet seen as if it were already so.

If God calls that which is not as if it were, its existence is by that absolutely pledged. This then is the purpose, and already He has said that, “All things work together for good,” let us remember, according to that purpose. If we have anything else before our eyes, it is no wonder that we question very much how things are working for good to us. If we fail to keep in mind that which is present to God, we fail to understand what He is doing; for the fulfilment of His purpose, not one thing necessary can possibly be absent. 2. Naturally, if this be so, the challenge with which the apostle closes is yet, after all, simple: “What shall we say then to these things? If God be for us, who shall be against us?” What He has already done is the assurance that He will leave nothing undone. He has not spared His Son but delivered Him up for us all. God’s holiness has been fully satisfied and God’s love has not shrunk from that which is needed to give it satisfaction. If He has not spared His Son, “how shall He not also with Him freely give us all things?” A limitless blessing there, but what else could rightly measure the love which has given His Son?

Then, what can be against this? “Who shall lay anything to the charge of God’s elect?” As we see in the prophet, if Satan stands at the right hand of Joshua, clothed in filthy garments, his sins upon him, to resist him, the word which settles all is, God has chosen to pluck a brand out of the burning. Certainly it is a brand.

Certainly it was just the thing for burning. If God chooses to pluck it out, who shall say Him nay? How completely our sinful condition is passed over in this, or rather, it is made the means only the more of glorifying the grace which comes in for us! If, then, God has His chosen ones, who shall lay anything to their charge? It is God Himself who justifies. Who, then, shall condemn? That is the proper connection of these expressions. God is the only One who has title, in fact, to justify.

He will do it, of course, according to absolute righteousness, nay, as this epistle has shown us, His very righteousness is displayed in doing it, and in heaven those that are in Christ will thus be made “the righteousness of God in Him.” But just on this very account, the thing is sure. “Who shall condemn when God is He who justifies?” Then “it is Christ who died, yea, rather, who was raised up and who is at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession (in the place of power) for us.” Who then shall separate us from the love of Christ? The question speaks for itself. Put as a question, it is put in the strongest form. It is a challenge, as already said, that whoever or whatever can do this be produced. Yet there are many things that seem against us. So then, “tribulation or anguish or persecution or famine or nakedness or peril or sword?” can these?

Nay, that was written and true of God’s saints of old; of them it was written: “For Thy sake we are put to death all the day long, we have been counted as sheep for slaughter.” Can we separate these suffering ones from Him for whose sake they suffer? Nay, in all these things we more than conquer through Him who loved us. “Conquer” by itself is too little to express it.

We more than conquer; conquer in result, conquer in the endurance of the very sufferings which cannot prevail unless to bless and brighten us. Christ, though He may seem absent, is superintending it all in a love which mixes the whole cup for us, and every ingredient is blessing. “For I am persuaded 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 creature:” -all these things are creatures. A promiscuous looking assemblage it may be, but he wants to sum up everything that could possibly be thought of. Nothing, then, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which in Christ Jesus our Lord has found a perfect title for its expression, and which in Him, as we look at Him, has found already perfect expression. Christ Jesus, our Lord, the Man Christ Jesus, already shows us God with man in the fullest possible and absolutely unchangeable blessing.