If God is for us, who can be against us? (Rom. 8:31-39)
 |
| Image from Pixabay |
“What shall we then say to these things?” The truths of God’s word are not meant to be merely filed away. They are meant to be mulled over, thought about, explored, and applied. We are meant to draw out the implications of doctrine. That is what Paul is doing here. He is drawing out the implications of the truths of this chapter, and indeed, of the whole book up to this point. We need to do this as well.
But this means that we are going to be doctrinal people. It means that we are going to be people who care about doctrine. For you are not going to even be able to ask this question that Paul is asking if you don’t know what these things are! “These things” include the universality of human sinfulness and the fact that we are by nature idol makers who worship and serve the creature rather than the Creator. It includes the fact that all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. It includes the promise of our salvation from God’s holy wrath on account of our sin in the doctrine of justification by faith on the basis of the imputed righteousness of Jesus Christ. “These things” include the reality of our union with Christ in his death, burial, and resurrection, of our deliverance from the law in terms of its condemning power. It includes the truths of the work of the Holy Spirit who is in us, sanctifying us and bearing witness with our spirits that we are the children of God. “These things” include the hope of a renewed creation that we long for. It includes the promise that God is working all things for the good of those who love him, who are called according to his purpose. “These things” includes the truth about God’s foreknowledge and predestination and calling and justification and glorification. You can’t say anything to these things if you don’t first of all know what they are.
Unfortunately, a lot of Christians don’t seem to care about these things. The reason why is that many of them are looking for a quick fix to their problems, and they can’t see how thinking about the foreknowledge of God or the predestinating decree are going to help them there. But the apostle Paul is about to show us that the seeds of these doctrines grow into mighty oaks of assurance for the Christian, and grow us into people who are able to withstand the hurricane force winds of suffering and affliction. So if we are going to be people who are immoveable in the face of trials, who rejoice in the hope that we have in Christ, then these are going to be things that we need to know “these things.”
There is something else about what Paul is doing here that shouldn’t escape us. There is doxology here in verses 31-39. You see, the apostle is not content to simply state the doctrine; he wants us to exult in it as well. God is not simply to be studied; he is to be worshiped. Biblical doctrine is not only meant to make us think right things about God and say right things about God; it is also meant to bring us to love God, and trust in him, and obey him with all our hearts. The truths of God’s word are meant to make us worshipping people. Does the gospel cause you to want to worship God? Do they make you want to love him more? Do they draw out the affections of your heart to him? Theology ought to lead to doxology. And doxological people are the best witnesses for the truths of the doctrines that they rejoice in.
So this is what we want to look at today in verses 31-39. Here we have Paul’s doxology. But you will notice that it comes in a series of questions, seven to be exact. The main question is in the second part of verse 31: “If God be for us, who can be against us?” And then in the following verses the apostle shows through this series of rapid-fire questions and answers why the answer to this question is that there is nothing in the universe that can be successfully against us. Nothing! God will not be against us, for he has already given us his Son (32). No one else, men or demons, can be against us and condemn us and bring charges against us with any hope of success because God justifies us and Christ has died, risen, and sits at his Father’s right hand to intercede for us (33-34). Tribulations and trials can’t be against us – again, not successfully – for in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us (35-37). And then Paul ends with the note of confident persuasion and exultation: “For I am persuaded that” nothing – his list leaves nothing out, including ourselves and our sins! – nothing can separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord (38-39).
In fact, I think we can digest the meaning of this passage through the two parts of the second question in verse 31. Through the lens of the first part, “If God be for us,” we can see how these verses remind us again how we can answer that question in the affirmative, on what basis God is for us, and what this means. And then, in the question “who can be against us?” we can see how these verses show us how every enemy of our souls cannot turn God against us or bring us to shame in the end.
“If God be for us”
The apostle is not asking this question in order to cast doubt upon God’s love and faithfulness to his people. You could translate it this way: “Since God is for us, who can be against us?” Paul is not living in perpetual doubt about his salvation. See how he ends: “I am persuaded,” he says, that nothing “shall be able to separate us from, the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” This is an expression of assurance of final salvation. This is not only a statement of the doctrine of the final perseverance of the saints, it is a personal testimony to its power in the life of the apostle Paul.
Now I know that people have said that Paul could have this personal assurance by means of direct revelation, but that the rank-and-file Christian can’t have this kind of assurance. But surely this is ridiculous. Paul is not writing merely a personal testimony here; this is for all the church. Paul writes not in the singular but in the plural. He is including all the saints at Rome in this exultation and confidence. Christians are meant to have the assurance of their salvation. If you don’t have it, it doesn’t mean you’re lost, but neither does it mean that you shouldn’t have it. God gives us the spirit of adoption by which we cry, “Abba, Father,” again, another testimony to God’s desire that we should share in Paul’s confidence in final salvation.
God is for us. What does that mean? It means first and foremost that God is not against us. It means that “there is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus” (8:1). It means that we have peace with God (5:1). It means that God is working all things for our good (8:28). It means that we are being conformed to the image of God’s own Son (29). It means that we are marked out for glory (8:17, 18, 30). It means that God is our Shepherd and that we shall not want, that he leads us beside still waters and makes us lie down in green pastures and leads us in paths of righteousness for his name’s sake. It means that though we walk in the valley of the shadow of death, we need fear no evil for he is with us, his rod and his staff protecting and comforting us. It means that he anoints our head with oil and prepares a table for us in the presence of our enemies. It means that goodness and mercy follow us all the days of our lives and that we will dwell in the house of the Lord forever (Psalm 23). It means that God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble (Ps. 46:1). It means that God loves us, not in the trite and shallow sense in which this phrase is thrown around in our culture today, but in the sense that he sent his only begotten Son to die for our sins in order to bring us into the eternal blessing of his fellowship.
So surely we see that it is essential that we see that God is for us. It is important also because it really is going to be hard to enter into the spirit of exultation and joy and hope here if we are in doubt whether or not God is for us. Can we say that God is for us, as Paul is saying here? On what grounds can we say that? Surely that is a very important question. It is a question that in a very real sense has been answered throughout this epistle. It’s what the doctrine of justification by faith is meant to answer. But once again, we see the apostle being a good teacher here, and reminding us on what grounds we can say with Paul, “God is for me.” What are these grounds?
God’s grace
Why is God for us? He is for us because of his own free initiative. He is for us by a free gift of grace. God’s grace pervades everything the apostle says about our salvation. You see it explicitly in verse 32, in that God has given us his Son and with him he has freely given us all things. We don’t merit one thing in salvation. With Christ, God gives all things freely. If you are in Christ, there is nothing that is for your eternal good that God will withhold from you. How then do we come to be in Christ? We come to be in Christ through the effectual call, uniting us to Christ by faith. It is God who creates faith in us (Eph. 2:8) and draws us to his Son; in fact, unless he draws us, no one will come (Jn. 6:44). In other words, there is no part of the Christian life that is not utterly dependent upon God and his grace.
Though we must insist that faith is necessary for salvation (because the Bible does), yet even here we must be careful. We are not saved because of our faith; we are saved through faith. This is not a sophist’s distinction; it’s a Biblical one. The Bible does not say that we are saved because of the quality or quantity of our faith, but because of the object of our faith, which is Jesus Christ. Faith does not make us worthy; it is simply the means by which in God’s plan we receive the free gift of salvation in Jesus Christ our Lord. There is nothing in us that ever made us worthy of salvation and there is nothing in us that keeps us worthy of salvation. Salvation is always from first to last the free gift of God in Christ.
It is important that we insist on this. There have always been people who will say that we are saved by grace, but when you probe them about this, what they mean is that we get saved by grace, but we are kept saved by works. This seems to be the straight up claim of the New Perspective on Paul, for example. It is the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church and other non-Protestant groups. But the Bible doesn’t teach that. It doesn’t say that we get in by grace but are kept by works, but that we are kept by the grace of God, and that God’s grace is what saved us, saves us, and will save us in the end. As Paul will write later in this epistle, “And if [salvation be] by grace, then is it no more of works: otherwise grace is no more grace” (Rom. 11:6). But the fact of the matter is that I suspect that every one of us can get into this mindset and think that God is only for us as long as we haven’t sinned too much.
Now I’m not suggesting that it doesn’t matter how you live; it does. We are to live as repentant sinners; those who do not are not saved. The grace of God teaches us to live soberly, righteously and godly in this present world (Tit. 2:11-13). But never do our works become the basis our relationship with God; never does our obedience become the ground of our acceptance with God. God’s grace, never our works, is the reason why any of us are saved and stay saved.
God’s election
Why is God for us? He is not for us because we chose him (though that’s not to say that we don’t choose him – we do) but because he first chose us. You will notice this mention of election in verse 33: “Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God's elect?” Paul is describing the saved as God’s elect. We saw, when we looked at verse 29 and the foreknowledge of God, that this is really what that is referring to. To be foreknown by God is not a reference to his omniscience or foresight but to his covenantal commitment to us from eternity in Christ. When we get to chapter 9, we will see this even more clearly. But just to give a preview of coming attractions, in chapter 9 Paul will make abundantly clear that election is not based on foreseen good works (9:11). “It [election and salvation] is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that sheweth mercy” (16). Election, in other words, is unconditional. God’s choice of a people to save is not based on anything in them, but merely on God’s gracious will and purpose. We are not chosen because we are holy, but we are chosen to be holy (Eph. 1:4). This again, points us to the grace of God in our salvation. If we are saved, we must not think that we arrived here because we were better or smarter than the next person. We are saved because God sovereignly set his affection upon us before the foundation of the earth.
God’s justification
Why is God for us? Note what Paul says next: “It is God that justifieth.” It is good for us to remind ourselves what this means. To be justified by God means that he pardons all your sins and accepts you as righteous in his sight, only for the righteousness of Christ imputed to you and received by faith alone. The righteousness by which we are made right with God is not our righteousness; it is God’s righteousness. It is not a righteousness that we create or work out, but a righteousness that we receive by faith in Christ. It is so important to remember this. When we see clearly the holiness of God and are convinced of the justice of God and that all our sins are worthy of his judgment and that we are worthy of hell, it is hard for us to see and understand how God could ever accept us. But we are not accepted on the basis of anything we have done or will do. God justifies the ungodly (Rom. 4:5), those who have no works of their own, but who are clothed by grace in the righteousness of God in Christ.
God's Son
Why is God for us? Paul says that no one can condemn us because “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” (34). In Christ’s death, all the sins of the elect were purged. By his resurrection he proved it. By his ascension into heaven and his seating at the Father’s right hand, he now intercedes for us.
Think of the intercession of Christ for his people. There is a preview of it in John 17 by the way: read it! It means that we are not having to twist our Lord’s arm to do us good. He intercedes for us. He speaks up for us. Nor should we think of the intercession of Christ as if he were somehow having to twist the Father’s arm. Our Lord himself said to his disciples on the brink of his death, “At that day ye shall ask in my name: and I say not unto you, that I will pray the Father for you: for the Father himself loveth you, because ye have loved me, and have believed that I came out from God” (Jn. 16:26-27). Jesus is not having to beg the Father to help us in our time of need. Certainly we don’t need the saints or Mary to intercede for us. Why would we go to them when we can come directly to the Father through Christ? If we were to go to some saint in prayer to ask something of Jesus for us, does that not assume that Jesus is somehow not willing to hear our prayer? Isn’t that blasphemous? It certainly isn’t Biblical. There is not a single Bible verse that commands us to pray to Mary or to any saint. But Paul writes that “through him [Jesus] we both [Jew and Gentile] have access by one Spirit unto the Father” (Eph. 2:18). We have direct access to the Father. There is nothing in the way! We are a kingdom of priests to God. We can come boldly to the throne of grace that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need (Heb. 4:16).
Our Lord in giving us instruction to pray put it like this: “But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking. Be not ye therefore like unto them: for your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask him” (Mt. 6:7-8). The point that I think our Lord was trying to make was that we don’t have to badger God at the throne of grace. We don’t have to wear him out with words. He is ready and willing to hear our prayers.
My friend, how do we know that God is for us? We know it because Christ died, rose, and intercedes for us. He is not working against us and never will. He is working for us. He is our advocate with the Father (1 Jn. 2:1). “Wherefore he is able also to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by him, seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for them” (Heb. 7:25).
God's love in Christ
Why is God for us? Paul goes on in verses 35-39 to talk about the love of Christ. God is for us because Christ loves his own which are in the world and loves them to the end (Jn. 13:1). Unfortunately, many Christians talk about God’s love as if it were indistinguishable from his general good will to all men (as in Mt. 5:44-48). If that is the case, then the love of Christ isn’t particularly reassuring, because that would mean that he loves the people who end up in hell equally with those who do not. That evacuates “God loves you” of any real assurance! But the Bible makes it very clear that our Lord’s love is a saving love. No one can separate us from his love. His love doesn’t hang on our love but the other way round. We love him because he first loved us.
So how can we know that God is for us? How can we get on the same page with Paul and say, “Since God is for us”? How can we know that God is for us? And the answer in this epistle is that we can know this through faith alone in Christ alone on the basis of grace alone to the glory of God alone. We stand in our assurance, not on the basis of our works, but on the basis of God’s grace, God’s election, God’s justification, God’s Son, and God’s love. Now we can ask the question:
“Who can be against us?”
So we’ve seen that we are reminded in these verses why we can say that God is for us. Now let’s consider the second part of verse 31: “who can be against us?” The question of course is not that there is nothing against us. There are many things against the Christian. They are against us in the sense that they oppose us. The devil is against us and opposes us: “Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour” (1 Pet. 5:8). Our own flesh is against us: “Dearly beloved, I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul” (1 Pet. 2:11). Even our own family and friends can sometimes be against us: “Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword. For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother-in-law. And a man's foes shall be they of his own household” (Mt. 10:34-36). Events in providence can be against us: “And Jacob their father said unto them, Me have ye bereaved of my children: Joseph is not, and Simeon is not, and ye will take Benjamin away: all these things are against me” (Gen. 42:36). Yes, there are many things that can be against us: “For a great door and effectual is opened unto me, and there are many adversaries” (1 Cor. 16:9).
So Paul is no Pollyana. We should not think that he is saying that if we have enough faith and keep our noses clean, God won’t allow hard things to come storming into our lives. No, of course not, for Paul himself had a very hard life in the service of Christ. What Paul is saying with the question, “Who can be against us?” is that no one can be successfully against us. They can’t be against us in such a way as to threaten the good that God is doing for us (Rom. 8:28). They can’t be against us in such a way as to threaten the work of God in conforming us to his Son (29). They can’t be against us in such a way as to threaten the final perseverance of the saints and the glory that is to be revealed for them (18, 30).
Paul works this argument out in three stages, first in verse 32, then in verses 33-34, and finally in verses 35-39.
God is not against us
Paul writes in verse 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?” This is meant to support the claim in verse 31 that God is for us and so no one can be against us. Here Paul reasons from the greater to the lesser. He argues that since God has done the greatest thing for us already, he will not fail to do the lesser thing. The greatest thing is the fact that the Father did not spare his own Son but delivered him up for us all.
Almost every word has a depth of meaning here. Whom did God not spare? His own Son. Jesus is not the son of God the way we are. We are adopted into the family of God. We are and will always be creatures. There will always be an infinite distance between us and God. But not so the Son of God. He is God’s “own Son,” Son by eternal generation, Son by nature, co-equal and co-eternal with the Father and the Spirit. He is the Word of God who was with the Father from the beginning and before the beginning, who made all things, and whose fellowship and glory the Father has rejoiced in always.
We of course rightly focus on the sacrifice of the Son for us: his tears in the garden, his phony trial and mocking, his cruel and painful crucifixion. He was obedient unto death. He bore the crown of thorns and was pierced with spikes nailing him to the cross. His agonies were real and for our sins. What love! Paul exhorts us to “walk in love, as Christ also hath loved us, and hath given himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweetsmelling savour” (Eph. 5:2). But we must not pass over the sacrifice that the Father made in giving us his Son. He is the one who did not spare his own Son. He was the one who delivered him up for us all. This is incomparable sacrifice. No earthly father can love his child the way the Father loves his own Son, the only begotten Son. For the Father to give up his Son to the hands of wicked men is an act of infinite love. This is something that the Bible speaks to again and again. John 3:16: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” Or 1 John 4:9-10: “In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him. Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.” This is love, this is the very definition of love, the Father sending, not sparing, delivering up his own Son for our sins. All other love is a faint shadow of this.
The apostle’s point is that there is no act of love that God will spare us. Why? Because he has already not spared his own Son. He has already given us the greatest gift, and therefore there is no reason why he should give us “all things. All things? Yes, he works all things for our good, our eternal good (28). He “hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ” (Eph. 1:3).
Unlike other gods, the Biblical God is not capricious or arbitrary. He will not do this for his people and then turn his back on them. God is for us. We know this because he gave us his Son. And because he did this, we know that there is no one who can be against us.
Let’s also remember what it meant for the Father to not spare the Son. He was delivered up as an atonement for sin. All the sins of the elect were purged on the cross. All who believe on Christ have all their sins forgiven, because of what Christ did. God’s justice was perfectly satisfied by what the Son did on the cross, making way for his grace and mercy and goodness. This is what happened that day on Golgotha: “he [Christ] was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth: he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth. He was taken from prison and from judgment: and who shall declare his generation? for he was cut off out of the land of the living: for the transgression of my people was he stricken. And he made his grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death; because he had done no violence, neither was any deceit in his mouth. Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him; he hath put him to grief: when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hand” (Isa. 53:5-10). Jesus died not as a martyr but as a sacrifice, not as an example but as a sin-bearer for others.
It is sometimes denied that the cross did anything besides making provision for salvation. But the Bible says that Jesus effected salvation. Notice how Paul describes it here in Romans 8: God delivered up his own Son “for us all.” Who is the “us all”? The context tells you: it is those whom God foreknew (chose), predestined, called, justified, and glorified. All those for whom Christ died will be saved. There is actually a very simple reason for this. If Christ actually bore the punishment of sins upon himself, then those sins must be forgiven. It would be impossible for God to do otherwise. As Toplady put it:
This is important because it means exactly what Toplady says: that if we have received the atonement of Christ through faith, then there is no possibility of our coming again to condemnation. Our sins are forgiven once and forever. God is for us, not against us!
Satan and all our enemies can’t be against us
But this is not all that Paul says. He goes on: “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” (33-34). The world often stands against the Christian to accuse them. Paul says that he suffered imprisonment as an evildoer. That is, he was treated as if he were a wicked criminal. He was often thrown in prison. He was beaten and stoned and slandered. But behind this was the real enemy (and Paul knew this): the Devil, Satan. He is called the “accuser of the brethren” (Rev. 12:10). In Zech. 3, we see Satan at the right hand of God’s high priest Joshua to resist and accuse him (1). This is what Satan does. He is a liar and one of the lies that he likes to spread is that God’s people are not really forgiven. He would like us to believe that God does not love us because we are so unworthy of him. And of course we are unworthy! This is what makes it seem so credible.
However, note how the apostle answers such accusations. Many things can be laid to the charge of God’s elect and they have. But Paul is saying that every accusation will fall to the ground. Why? Because God is the one who justifies us. God’s throne of judgment is the highest throne; there is no appeal beyond his. Satan cannot take up his arguments and accusations elsewhere. He can try to make a charge stand at the judgment seat of God, but it will not stand. God has fully acquitted and justified all his people. There is no sin that stands between them and God. No condemnation (8:1)!
In verse 34 the apostle gives the basis of this declaration of God. Christ died, rose, ascended, and now pleads for his people. The Father justifies; the Son pleads. It reminds me of a illustration that Spurgeon once used. He said that a man who was both an American and British citizen was condemned in a foreign country to be executed by a firing squad. But on the day of his execution, the ambassadors of both countries wrapped their flags around the man as he stood in front of the firing squad. Spurgeon noted that it was as if he had been encased in steel. The man was spared. The same thing is true with the Christian. We are doubly encased in the bullet-proof armor plating of God’s declaration of acquittal and acceptance and Christ’s atonement and intercession. As our Lord put it in John 10, “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me: And I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand. My Father, which gave them me, is greater than all; and no man is able to pluck them out of my Father's hand” (27-29). No, our enemies can never be successfully against us.
Our Trials can’t be against us
God is not against us; our enemies will never successfully be against us. But Paul the pastor knows that our own weakness, brought on by suffering, can be a source of anxiety and worry to the Christian. We wonder: will we be able to stand? Or will we wilt under the pressure and walk away from the faith? And so the apostle assures us that if you truly belong to God, this can never happen to you. God won’t allow it. That doesn’t mean he won’t allow suffering and hardship. But it does mean that he will always give us a way of escape that we might be able to bear it (1 Cor. 10:13). And so he goes on: “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” (35-39).
Sometimes, actually there are a lot of voices that say this, that a Christian can make himself or herself fall away. They claim that you can lose your salvation. But what we see here is that Paul precludes such an eventuality. Because if there is anything that could make a believer fall away it would be tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, peril, and the sword. If anything could make a believer fall away it would be because of the vulnerability of being a sheep led to the slaughter. But what does the apostle say to this? He doesn’t deny that these bad things will happen. Our Lord told his disciples that “And ye shall be betrayed both by parents, and brethren, and kinsfolks, and friends; and some of you shall they cause to be put to death. And ye shall be hated of all men for my name's sake” (Lk. 21:16-17). That’s not very comforting, is it? Don’t we all have a breaking point? If the devil applies enough pressure, if our circumstances become bad enough, won’t we break? Will our trials, if they are bad enough, be successfully against us?
Hear then what our Lord said next: “But there shall not an hair of your head perish. In your patience possess ye your souls” (18-19). Praise God for that. Paul goes on to say that we are more than conquerors in all these things through him that loved us. No one and nothing can separate us from Christ’s love for us. We not only will make it through, but we will be more than conquerors. The suffering will not turn us away from Christ. They will in the end by the grace of God strengthen us to endure and through patience possess our souls.
By the way, it doesn’t mean that we will never sin or backslide. Job sinned in his trial, but God preserved his faith. Peter turned away for a time and denied his Lord, but Jesus prayed for him that he faith fail not, and he returned the leading apostle among the apostles. David committed heinous sins, but God restored him. The Lord knows those who are his. He will hold us fast. We are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation ready to be revealed at the last day (1 Pet. 1:5).
We won’t persevere in the end because we are so wise or holy or strong. We will persevere because Christ loves us.
Note how Paul ends. It is an exhaustive list. Nothing can separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord: nothing! When Paul says, “nor any other creature,” it’s as if he is saying, “If I forgot anything, it goes under this category.” You’re a creature, aren’t you. So if no creature can separate you from the love of God, then you can’t. It is impossible. When our Lord foretells the great falling away in the last days, he says this: “there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall shew great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect” (Mt. 24:24). If it were possible. But it is not! God will keep his own.
Now what are we to do with this? Christian, let this fill you with hope and encouragement. Many things can be taken away from us. But all the sufferings of this present time cannot take away the life to come and even participate in increasing the weight of future glory. You have an inheritance incorruptible, undefined, and that fades not away, reserved in heaven for you (1 Pet. 1:4). And then let it fill you with love to God. If he so loves us with such steadfast love, how can we not love him more? And then let it fill us with fearless love to our neighbor. Let this make us courageous people, for we have something that no one can take away.
And then to the non-Christian, I ask you to consider whether the world apart from Christ can give you this kind of hope, a hope anchored not in wishful thinking but in the concrete act of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross and his resurrection from the dead. This world will give you a buzz and then let you down and leave you alone. It will provide you with endless distractions as you waltz unprepared to the judgment to come. What Christ gives his people is so much better. Embrace him by faith. All who come to him he will never cast out. He will give you living water by which you will never thirst again.
.jpg)
Comments
Post a Comment