Or, The Inseparable Love That Makes Unconquerable Sheep
Scripture: Romans 8:31-34
Date: November 20, 2022
Speaker: Sean Higgins
As you read God’s Word in the quiet of the morning you may not always hear the author’s intended tone of the passage in your mind, and fine. I imagine that the first person who read Paul’s letter to the Romans for the first time didn’t realize in real-time how dramatic the rhetoric and argument and theology really are here at the halfway point; did he say, “Wait, let me read that again”? We who have familiarity with it, who have heard it a hundred or even a thousand times, aren’t desensitized by the gold. We come here for the certain comfort and courage like a wall of wave driving us to shore; this is like a great golden wave.
If previous parts in the letter convicted men of sin, clarified doctrine, called men to believe in Christ for salvation, this final part of chapter 8 is certainly for stimulating the faith and hope of believers. There is a crescendo, not necessarily to the entire epistle, but to a long section on the gospel. Paul narrows the subject at the start of chapter 9, and drills down on it for a least three chapters. The gospel has an order to it (Romans 1:16), and while chapter 9 begins a discussion on the Jew first and also Gentile (and Jew again), chapter 8 trumpets the security and eternality of the evangel for all who would ever believe.
A bell-ringing of rhetorical questions make the realities of God’s work for us in and through Christ assumptions worth dying for, or at least worth groaning through. The first section, verses 31-34, bang on some heavy theological implications, that nothing can succeed in changing God’s position for us. The second section, verses 35-39, which we’ll consider next Lord’s Day, pronounce the impotence of all enemies to the love of Christ for us; nothing can separate us from God’s love. The Word feeds our hope with realities even if the visibilities work against us.
(Don’t like the title, “Champion”? No worries, choose a better one. Our word derives from the Latin campus - a military camp, where there are campions - fighters. So, one “who has defeated or surpassed all rivals; who fights or argues a cause on behalf of someone else.” That is the image portrayed through these questions.)
Two questions swell up from the previous paragraph.
What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us?
The second question answers the first question. We do know what to say. What we shall say is that God is for us.
What provokes the question is these things , plural, so an umbrella over multiple things. While there’s no obvious reason to limit the “things” to only the previous paragraph, a lot of those things in verses 28-30 wrap up truths from the letter.
It is for the we and the us and the us . In the immediate context God’s Spirit prays for us when all we can do is groan. Our day to day, in real time lack of words when we’re suffering can’t ruin our hope. We’re also brought in to see a portion of the divine perspective, with His purpose to choose a people to make like His Son.
The last sentence in verse 30 summarizes from first to last: God 1) predestined, 2) called, 3) justified, 4) glorified. If these four were the “these things” that would be a powerful set. It’s the same group in all four. No one starts with justification (all the justified have been predestined), and no one ends with called (the called will no doubt be glorified). If your glorification is certain, as the past tense presents it, then your election is certain (see the label “elect” in verse 33). God predestines, God calls, God justifies, God glorifies.
This is why we can believe that God is for us . The way Paul asks not only asserts the truth, he argues from the truth. The question who can be against us? isn’t about the possibility of troublers but about the impossibility of their success.
The LORD is on my side; I will not fear.
What can man do to me?
(Psalm 118:6 ESV)
Verse 33 raises the possibilities of accusers, but their words are like dandelion seeds. Verse 35 refers to persecutors and killers, but when they do their worst they can’t disrupt God’s love for His own. All creation against Creator looses. Any dependent, who is dependent on the Sovereign for his own existence, can’t defeat the Sovereign. No non-God beats God, nor those God makes Himself for.
There is no question about His position toward us.
More than predestination, regeneration, justification, and glorification—so more than choosing us, raising us from spiritual death, declaring our sins forgiven, and restoring the full image of shared glory—the way we know God is for us, and actually the price for all the salvation, is the cross work of the Son.
He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?
The question doesn’t make us doubt, it draws us near to the warmth of the promise.
Paul uses language that reminds us of the Lord’s word to Abraham in Genesis 22: “because you have done this and have not withheld (same Greek word in the LXX as in Romans 8:32) your son, your only son, I will surely bless you” (verse 16). Of course Abraham was ready to obey, God went through with it, all the way (John 3:16; Isaiah 53:10). The Father did not spare , “He did not withhold or lighten one whit of the full toll of judgment executed upon his own well-beloved and only-begotten Son” (Murray).
If I could have only one benediction, if I could give one truth to the groaning Christian, even more than Romans 8:28, verse 32 is what verse 28 is proved and purchased by. This is John 3:16 not just seen on a sign behind home plate, but covering you like a blanket while you lay in a hospital bed. The material, so to speak, of eternal life, are all the things belonging to eternal life.
There are at least four arguments in this verse.
First is the argument for God’s logical giving, from the greater to the lesser. If God gives what is of greatest price for securing the greatest blessing of our eternal life, then of course He will give the rest of the smaller, so to speak, things.
Second is the argument God’s sacrificial giving. Before even considering the progression, consider the nature of the gift; His own Son . Here is God in sovereign generosity, magnanimity. He predestined us to be gift-receivers.
Third is the argument for God’s effective giving. In verse 31 any who would be against us must deal with God’s secure protection of us. In verse 32 any possible lack we face must remember God’s certain provision for us. Do you lack wisdom? Do you lack strength? Do you lack freedom from sin? Do you lack peace? He has purchased all you need, it is an all-inclusive package. His gifts are effective for our growth toward and reaching the goal of conformity to Christ.
Fourth is the argument for God’s particular giving. All things are yours, but all these things are not given to all people, it is only for us all . He gives His Son for all those He is for, and He is for all those He predestined and called. These are called “God’s elect,” these are the ones Christ Jesus intercedes for. The love and sacrifice and gifts are effective to the targeted group.
If we say that Christ died for each and every person who has ever existed, because God is for them and didn’t spare His own Son for them, and therefore will obviously give them all things, then what about those already in Hell? What about those who persist in their rebellion and unbelief? He gave His Son to give them salvation but He didn’t give them faith to receive the salvation? No.
Our hope is in God’s sovereign grace through the particular redemption of His sheep. His sheep can never be separated from the Shepherd.
The sending of the Son and His sacrifice were either effective and particular, or not effective. God’s giving is for the propitiation of our sins and the perseverance of our faith. He gives all things that pertain to life and godliness so that the elect might be partakers of Christ’s image and enter into the eternal kingdom of our Lord (see 2 Peter 1:3-4, 10-11).
There is no question about His provision for us.
Groaning happens because of loss, because of hurt, because of false guilt, and because of sinful men still in enmity against God who enjoy taking it out on the persons most representing God. Ironically, they like to judge (not realizing they are in the wrong seat.) It comes out in accusations (then even killing, see next verses).
Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us.
Charge , condemn , accuse, judge, slander, all the same. We’re taken back to the righteousness of God being revealed, in God’s declaring His people righteous. Accusers can’t overcome the one who does the accounting; it is God who justifies .
The elect are here by God’s choice (see also Colossians 3:12), and, there is more to come about God’s election in chapter 9. The death and resurrection of Jesus show the Father and Son’s love, and proclaim that the Son bore the Father’s wrath and that the Father received the substitution on behalf and raised His Son in vindication of that acceptance.
For us Christ died. For us Christ was raised. (For us) Christ is at the right hand of God. For us Christ intercedes.
Jesus said “It is finished,” referring to taking our punishment, but not His priestly work of prayer. Even now He intercedes for the ones He atoned for (see also Hebrews 7:25, also Isaiah 53:12). The Spirit prays when we’re groaning so much that we’re not sure what to pray, the Son prays for the ongoing application of His purchase, and that He is at the right hand indicates the position of authority.
Even when our own heart condemns us, God is greater (1 John 4:10). No higher court of appeal is to be found. Those who argue against our justification argue against the gospel, the cross, and against the honor and justice of the Judge.
There is no question about His protection of us.
B. B. Warfield, in his book The Plan of Salvation summarizes:
“The things we have to choose between are an atonement of high value, or an atonement of wide extension. The two cannot go together.”
Loraine Boettner wrote one of the foremost books on Calvinism titled The Reformed Doctrine of Predestination (1932). His chapter on Limited Atonement is one that profoundly shaped my thinking on this issue. He gives a great concrete illustration of the difference between the two limitations:
“For the Calvinist it is like a narrow bridge which goes all the way across the stream; for the Arminian it is like a great wide bridge which goes only half-way across.”
We might say that there is mystery in the Father’s election, but there is no mystery in the argument for our hope.
If God is for us, and He is for every believer, blessings all around and forever. If God is not for you, cry out for His salvation.
If God is for us, He can’t be turned against us. If God is for us, all His sovereign wisdom and power keeps us inseparable from His love, and though we suffer or even are slayed, we have hope and are unconquerable sheep.
Turkey and ham, mashed potatoes and stuffing, pumpkin and pecan, relatives’ compliments and criticisms, Monday morning at work and Thursday afternoon on the couch, salvation and suffering, faith and fatigue, presents and unfinished projects, the gospel and good works, the Spirit and the Son, all are yours and you are Christ’s. Do not be as Job’s wife: “You speak as one of the foolish women would speak. Shall we receive good from God, and shall we not receive evil?” (Job 2:10). Resist the devil and your thanksgiving will be free.
So let no one boast in men. For all things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future—all are yours, and you are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s. (1 Corinthians 3:21–23, ESV)