God is for us!
Romans 8:31-32
God is for us!
Romans 8:31-32, What then shall we say to these things? If
God is for us, who can be against us? 32 He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things? Romans chapter 8 is about our eternal security. What it means to be saved eternally and to possess the Holy Spirit as the guarantee of that eternal promise.
We have gone basically through Paul's discussion of this great theme of security in the Spirit, and a glorious culmination in verses 28 to 30. The single greatest statement anywhere on the pages of Scripture about the security of the believer. "God is causing all things to work together for good."
Good is our eternal glory. Everything that happens in our lives God causes to work for our eternal glory.
Why? Because that is His purpose that we be brought to glory. V 29, "For whom He foreknew He predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son that His Son might be the firstborn, or the premier one among many brethren."
The purpose of God then was that men and women would be saved, brought all the way into the image of God's Son in eternal glory in order that Christ might be the chief one among many who were made like Him. V 30, "Therefore, whom God predestined He called, whom He called He justified and whom He justified these He also glorified."
The plan and purpose of God to choose, to call, to justify and to glorify that He might bring us to the very image of His Son in His presence forever. Therefore, God works everything that happens to that end both good and bad things, righteous and sinful things. He works them all to our ultimate glory.
V 31-39, one of the most wonderful doxologies in all of Scripture.
A song of praise. Paul, having stated all that he just stated about this matter of eternal security, about the matter of a salvation that can never end, that can never be forfeited, or removed, or taken away. Paul knew that there are going to be some people who may pose some questions.
What about this? Or that? So, from verses 31-39 in kind of an anthem of praise, he answers all the possible arguments. The doctrine of eternal salvation really started to unfold in chapter 5, when he talked about six great realities that come with salvation.
1. Peace with God, 2. Standing in grace, 3. The promise of glory, 4. Assurance of love,
5. Certainty of deliverance, and
6. Ultimate joy. Romans 5 shows how those are all ours in Christ. The other aspects of the glories of our salvation in chapters 6 and 7.
In chapter 8 comes to this great discussion of the eternality of our salvation and presents an unparalleled case for our security. Paul has presented the doctrine of the security of the believer on a positive note and now he moves in a triumphant way to answer all the possible arguments that people might pose against this doctrine.
Paul begins with a question, "What shall we say to these things?" What is going to be our response, or our reaction to what has been said, this great presentation of our security?
How do we respond? What conclusion do we draw from these truths about our security? Paul anticipates that some people are going to object. Some people are going to argue, no, a believer can lose his salvation. It is possible for a believer to perish.
It is possible for a believer through sin or wilful rejection to forfeit his salvation.
Is that a proper response? There are still people who are making that argument.
Paul knows the argument will come up and so he answers the objections. Only two possible ways, hypothetically your salvation could be lost.
It could only happen in two categories
It could be lost because of something done ➢ by a person or ➢ by a circumstance. Can some person or persons cause us to lose our salvation? Can some circumstance or circumstances cause us to lose our salvation? Those are the only two possibilities.
Can you lose your salvation by the influence of a person? V 31 to 34 he answers the question. Can you lose your salvation by the influence of circumstances? V 35 to 39 he answers the question.
Romans 8:1, because we are in Christ there is no condemnation, no judgment, but maybe there is some earthly person, some human person that could cause us to lose our salvation, our no- condemnation status.
Maybe there is someone. Secondly, maybe God Himself. Maybe God could come to the place where He was so disgusted with us that He took our salvation away. Maybe Satan, he is a person. Maybe he could remove us from God's salvation.
Maybe Christ could remove us from God's faithfulness, God's goodness, and God's salvation. If you can lose your salvation by the influence of a person, it must be a human being, God, Satan, or Christ. Those are precisely the points that Paul wants to address.
V 31, What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? Implies that there could be someone against us. The implication here is that Paul is dealing with the argument that says, well, someone could be against us and cause us to lose our salvation.
Is there such a person or persons?
How about the Judaizers?
The Judaizers went into Galatia, and they said to the Galatian Christians that you are not saved because you haven't been circumcised. You haven't kept all the Mosaic ceremonies and rituals and prescriptions. Because of that you aren't saved.
You need to reverse yourself and go back and be circumcised and keep the law of Moses and keep all the ceremonies.
Galatians 3:3, Are you so foolish? Having begun in the Spirit, are you now being made perfect by the flesh?
Galatians 5:4, You have become estranged from Christ, you who attempt to be justified by law; you have fallen from grace. Can the Judaizers in Galatia, can the legalists do that? Can they cause somebody to lose their salvation?
What about the false teachers that came into Corinth and disrupted the church and taught a false gospel? Gospel hybrid out of the Jewish legalism and a little bit of Greek philosophy thrown in and the Corinthians were enamoured by it and drawn to it?
Could they be drawn away and forfeit their salvation?
What about the Roman Catholic Church with its excommunication that takes people out of grace and damns them? Does the Roman Catholic Church have the power to remove someone from the grace of God and put them in a damnable situation because they have committed some mortal sins?
How about the church? When the church confronts someone about their sin and they don't repent and the church treats them like an unbeliever and puts them out. Is that really the church bringing them to a point of forfeiture of their salvation?
What about yourself? If not some other people or groups, what about just people around you influencing you wickedly to sin seriously, severely, and perhaps even habitually? What about yourself, are you a person who can cause yourself to lose your salvation by coming to a point of rejection and removing yourself from Christ?
This question is really a challenge to God. It's a challenge to the plan and purpose and power of God.
➢ Since God planned your salvation, ➢ Since God purposed in that plan to bring you into the image of Christ and ➢ Since God has the power to bring the plan to completion, Any person who can interrupt the plan must be more powerful than God.
Thus, the question, if God is for us, who in the world can successfully be against us? If God, based on foreknowledge, predestination, calling, justification, and glorification, has set in motion the redemptive plan, and will bring it to pass, who is more powerful than God?
There are those who would like to sever us from Christ.
- Some of you have unsaved families, parents who are irritated to no end that you have embraced Jesus Christ.
- Some of you have been put out of your family and if your parents had their way, they would sever you from Christ immediately.
- Some of you are married to an unconverted spouse, maybe you are here in a clandestine way.
You would be amazed how many women in an almost secretive fashion because they are forbidden by their husbands, who would be glad to sever them from Christ.
- The legalists would like to separate us from Christ.
- The cults would like to separate us from Christ.
- False teachers would like to separate us from Christ.
That’s what Paul is saying exactly here. If God is for us, who can be against us? "If"is a, for a little technical insight, a conditional particle of a fulfilled condition that can be translated "since." Since God is for us, rhetorical question, who can harm us?
Answer: No one.
Who is more powerful than God?
Who is more formidable than God? Answer: No one. Since God is for us, who can harm us?
Psalm 27:1-5, The Lord is my light and my salvation; Whom shall I fear? The Lord is the strength of my life; Of whom shall I be afraid? 2 When the wicked came against me To eat up my flesh, My enemies and foes, They stumbled and fell. 3 Though an
army may encamp against me, My heart shall not fear; Though war may rise against me, In this I will be confident. 4 One thing I have desired of the Lord, That will I seek: That I may dwell in the house of the Lord All the days of my life, To behold the beauty of the Lord, And to inquire in His temple. 5 For in the time of trouble He shall hide me in His pavilion; In the secret place of His tabernacle He shall hide me; He shall set me high upon a rock.
I asked Him to be my Lord and God. I asked Him to bring me to glory and He will do it no matter how many enemies I have.
Psalm 46:1-7, God is our refuge and strength, A very present help in trouble. 2 Therefore we will not fear, Even though the earth be removed, And though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea; 3 Though its waters roar and be troubled, Though the mountains shake with its swelling. Selah 4 There is a river whose streams shall make glad the city of God, The holy place of the tabernacle of the Most High. 5 God is in the midst of her, she shall not be moved; God shall help her, just at the break of dawn. 6 The nations raged, the kingdoms were moved; He uttered His voice, the earth melted. 7 The Lord of hosts is with us; The God of Jacob is our refuge. Selah
Romans 3:21, the gospel of justification is introduced.
Romans 3:21-8:30 one point is made that is God is for us.
That's why He sent His Son into the world. This is the reason God grants us by faith the righteousness of Christ. This is the reason He forgives all our sins. This is the reason God plants the Holy Spirit in us. God is for us.
Since God is for us, there isn't any person who can successfully be against us. In the Old Testament we will find the same kind of confidence. Repeatedly God is called a shield and a buckler. The Lord is with us, The Lord is for us, Our God is our defender.
Judges 6:12, And the Angel of the Lord appeared to him, and said to him, “The Lord is with you, you mighty man of valour!”
2 Timothy 4:16-17, At my first defence no one stood with me, but all forsook me. May it not be charged against them. 17 But the Lord stood with me and strengthened me, so that the message might be preached fully through me, and that all the Gentiles might hear. Also I was delivered out of the mouth of the lion.
Paul makes a grand and glorious statement of general truth, "God is for us, therefore no one can be successfully against us." There is no one, not the legalists, not the false teachers, not the cultists, not the wicked around us, not even ourselves can alter the purpose of God to choose us before the foundation of the world in foreknowledge to predestine us and then to call us and then to justify us and then to glorify us.
God will bring us all the way. The Lord did not choose us to the beginning of our salvation but to the end of it. There is no one powerful enough to overthrow Him. So, no person, human person can remove our no-condemnation status since God is higher than all His creation and has called us to glory.
What about God Himself? He's a person. Can't God take away our salvation if He wants? The Lord gives and the Lord takes away. It helps if you can quote Scripture out of context to make your point.
Can't God just decide, I have had enough out of you. You are more trouble than you are worth. I am trying to work heaven out so that it's everything everybody would want. If you are there, I am afraid it might not be, I have just changed My mind a little bit about you.
Can't the Lord do that if He wants?
Can't God do that? Can't He see us sinning and see us being disobedient and take back the gift He gave? We will agree that there isn't any human that can do it, but can't God do it? Isn't it just too much hassle to keep us saved and so finally He just lets us fall back?
The answer comes in verse 32. V 32, "He who did not spare His own Son but delivered Him up for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things?" If God gave His Son to save us, won't He give us anything else to keep us, since the giving of His Son was the greatest gift?
He already spent the maximum amount on our salvation. He is certainly willing to spend a lesser amount getting us to glory.
This is the greatest proof of God's grace. This is a typical Jewish argument, arguing from the greater to the lesser. God loved us and God chose us in His love before the foundation of the world and predetermined that love relationship to last forever.
✓ His love is strong, ✓ His love is securing, ✓ His love is so strong that to make that a reality, ✓ He gave His Son. ✓ He sent His Son into the world to save us.
Romans 5:6, For when we were still without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly.
Romans 5:8, But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
Romans 5:10, For if when we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life. If when we were His enemies, He loved us enough to give His Son, which is the greatest sacrifice, will He not do the lesser things necessary to keep us?
God has already given the best. He has already given the most. He is certainly not going to hold back the least. He is certainly not going to undo the work of the Son. If the Son died on the cross, and actually paid the penalty for your sins, for God to turn around and let you go would be to depreciate and undo what the Son had accomplished. To say nothing of disdaining the supreme sacrifice that the Son of God Himself would bear the punishment for sin.
Since He delivered His Son up for us all to save us, will He not also along with His Son give us whatever we need to get us to glory?
Whatever grace it takes?
Whatever strength it takes?
Whatever wisdom it takes? V 32, and you probably won't find this in cross references. But it may be a Greek translation of Genesis 22:12. Genesis 22 is all about the sacrifice of Isaac. Abraham had Isaac up on the altar ready to slay Isaac because God had told him to take his son up there and offer him as a sacrifice.
Genesis 22:12, And He said, “Do not lay your hand on the lad, or do anything to him; for now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from Me.” He said, "Do not stretch,"God said, "Do not stretch out your hand against the lad." Paul had that even in his mind. Like a picture of Christ. Abraham, ready to offer his son and plunge the knife into the heart of his son, is a picture of God willing, as it were, to offer His Son. Abraham only had one son, that son was the son of his love and promise. In that son all the nations would be blessed. Through that son salvation would come to the world and yet he was willing to offer him in death.
The picture is an amazing picture. Isaac, however, was spared by divine intervention. There was an animal caught in a bush. But Jesus was not. So, the picture is a comparison and a contrast.
The willingness of Abraham to offer up Isaac provides only a faint analogy of God's ultimate willingness to give His Son in sacrifice and not spare His Son the way Isaac was spared. He could have spared His Son. If He had, then we would have had to be punished.
But in love He spared not His Son.
John 3:16, For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.
When it came time for God to give His Son, He didn't spare Him. He didn't hold Him back. God said to Abraham, when you lifted that knife, I knew you feared Me, I knew you loved Me. Abraham showed his genuine faith. God spared Abraham’s son, but He didn't spare His own Son.
V 32, "He did not spare,""didn't hold Him back."
Isaiah 53:10, Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise Him; He has put Him to grief. When You 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.
God didn't hold Him back from death because it pleased the Lord to bruise Him. How could it possibly please the Lord to see His Son suffer the just punishment of all the sins of all who would ever believe?
How could it possibly please Him? Because He knew what was being gained by it. Do you know that it even pleased Christ because it tells us in the book of Hebrews that it was in an attitude of joy that He endured the cross?
It pleased the Lord to bruise Him. He didn't spare His own Son. The little preposition, the possessive pronoun, "own"is put in there for emphasis, "His own Son, but delivered Him up..." It refers literally to being delivered over to captors, soldiers.
Jesus by God was given over to the powers of darkness, was given over to Satan and Satan used his weapon on Him. According to Hebrews 2, the weapon is death. God made Him sin for us.
2 Corinthians 5:21, For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.
The Father delivered the Son to judgment and abandonment. "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?"
Who delivered Jesus? Somebody might say, "Judas for money." Somebody might say, "Pilate for fear." Somebody might say, "The Jews for envy." Best: The Father for love. God did it! V 32, "He delivered Him up for us all,” for us all.
"If God is for us."It's the "us"that God is for and the "us"of verse 31 is the "us"of verse 29, "Whom He foreknew He predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son." The "us"of the passage goes all the way back to verse 28, "We know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God who are called according to His purpose."
The "us"are those who love God because they have been called by Him to salvation.
It's those who love God because they are called according to His purpose, those who have been foreknown to be conformed to Christ, those predestined, called, justified and glorified, those are the ones God is for, those are the "us"that God is for and those are the "us"that no one can successfully be against and those are the "us"for whom God delivered up His Son, for all believers.
V 32, "If He has done that, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things?" If He didn't spare His Son in that, He's certainly not going to fail to give us the lesser things to bring us to glory.
What are those lesser things? As indicated in verse 28, it's just His providential orchestration of all the issues of life working together for our eternal glory. Compare "all things"in verse 32 with "all things"in verse 28.
That's the parallel you want. The "all things"of verse 32, "He gives us all things," compares to the "All things that work together for good." Whatever comes into our life, it's comprehensive, He just works it to our eternal glory. He works it to our eternal good.
We must conclude that there isn't any human, including ourselves, that could ever interrupt the plan and separate us from God and invalidate our salvation. Secondly, God Himself is not going to do it.
- If God already paid the supreme price, He would certainly pay the lesser price.
- If from the eternity past it was the purpose of God to give to His Son, to give to His Son a redeemed humanity to praise Him forever and ever.
- If God paid the supreme price to buy that redeemed humanity, He's going to make sure He takes care of maintaining them until they get to glory.
God will see the plan all the way to the end. In order to do that He has to take the "all things"of life and cover them with the "all things"of spiritual blessing and power. Providentially, He gives us all things to cover all things of life.
Now if He gives us all things to get us to glory, and takes all things and works together all those things for our good, how could anybody be lost? To deny security is to misunderstand the work and the love of God.
V 32, "How will He not also with Him freely give us all things?" It's not reluctant. The verb, charizomai, translated “freely give,” is used in the New Testament several times to mean “freely forgive.” It's used many times to mean “freely forgive.”
2 Corinthians 2:7, so that, on the contrary, you ought rather to forgive and comfort him, lest perhaps such a one be swallowed up with too much sorrow.
2 Corinthians 2:10, Now whom you forgive anything, I also forgive. For if indeed I have forgiven anything, I have forgiven that one for your sakes in the presence of Christ,
2 Corinthians 12:13,
Colossians 2:13, and 3:13.
What we really need to make it to glory is constant free forgiveness, right? Because the only potential thing that could interrupt us on the way to glory would be sin. Wonderful use of the verb here, "With Him freely give us all things,"we could say just in a generic sense, all things embrace
His forgiveness, but by using that specific word which is often translated “freely forgive,” we find it even closer to the issue. If I am going to make it to glory, what I need is constant forgiveness!
What right do you have to that? I have a right to that constant forgiveness because my sins have already been paid for. There isn't any person that can remove us from God's plan of salvation and God Himself won't do it either.
Now that leaves Satan and possibly Christ. We will look at it in the next study.