Romans’ central chapters have shown us one wonderful thing after another. `So what shall we say to these things?’ Surely, that we `rejoice in the hope of the glory of God!’ (5:2).
An enormous sense of assurance flows through these chapters. It was there in the flow of Romans’ first section: all of us, pagan or religious, have fallen short of God’s glory, so He has designed a way of salvation where everything is `by grace and guaranteed’, because He sees to it all (4:16, NIV as usual). And that good news led into the triumphant opening of 5:1: `Therefore, since we have been justified by faith ‘ – since there is nothing left now that could depend on our strength or achievement – `we have peace with God!’ Romans 5 is one of the Bible’s great chapters on assurance, and on God’s undeserved love for us (5:7-11). (Gooding observes, by the way, that the foundation of our assurance in God’s love in 5:1 is firstly His justice – the price is paid! – rather than His mercy. But therefore, assurance will be an increasing problem if we lose the sense of the `legal’, of what it means that Christ has `paid for’ our sins.)
Then, as we’ve seen, chapters 6-8 build on that sense of assurance: our new birth makes all the difference in the world, guarantees that sin shall not be our master, guarantees us glory. At new birth we have stepped `into Christ’; we have thereby opted into a destiny, like passengers stepping into an express train, and now that train will most surely carry us to our destination. Those God knew about beforehand, He has also destined to be made like Jesus (8:29)! Of course there is another side. We can still sin, we can make the process very hard for ourselves, we can go the very long way round, we can even necessitate divine surgery; and some of us do. But if we have truly repented, then the ultimate direction is certain: `In all things God works for the good of those who love Him’ (8:28). `He who began a good work in you will carry it through to completion until the day of Christ‘ (Phil 1:6)!
That is the theme that will close this part of Romans: `Nothing will be able to separate us from the love of God!’ As we come to the end of this densely nutritious section we do well to ask: How do these verses complete what was happening earlier in the chapter? Knowing how it finishes, how can we express Paul’s series of ideas, his flow of thought, to bring out the unity it surely had in his mind?
As we reflect, the answer becomes clear. Paul’s vision of our utter security as ch8 closes flows with glorious logic from the way it started: it is the end-point, the final fruition, of the `law of the Spirit of life’ (8:2). Just as the `law of sin and death’ meant that our rebellion led inevitably to destruction (6:23), so with equal certainty the work of the Spirit leads us from forgiveness to glory. `Those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God’ (8:14); this is where He is leading us, and He will not fail. The Spirit of Christ is the one who will stand alongside us even in our darkest moments (8:23,26); but He is also already the `firstfruits’ of glory within us (v23), the `guarantee` (cf Eph 1:14) that, while the present may be tough, the future is certain. He knows how to pray (Rom 8:27) according to the divine purpose by which, ultimately, everything will serve to make us like Christ (v29). And He himself will see that purpose through: we are `being transformed into (Christ’s) likeness’, says Paul elsewhere, `with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord who is the Spirit’ (2 Cor 3:18).
So Paul uses these final verses to underline that glorious assurance, in at least four ways.
First, God is for us! (v31). What an astonishing statement! Too many of us still labour under a notion of God as ultimately forbidding, unfriendly, critical, harsh. (Sometimes that’s linked with our experiences of our own fathers. It’s a huge responsibility to father children, because we define for them the meaning of `Father’ in a way that will shape their approach to the most crucial relationship of all.) When I was young, for example, I really doubted whether I had made it into the kingdom. I’d heard the gospel phrased so many different ways: you must believe; you must repent; you must admit, and believe, and confess, A-B-C; you must trust in Jesus… And it wasn’t very bright of me, but I used to wonder: maybe I could have repented but not confessed, or admitted but not trusted, and on the decisive last day salvation would slip between my fingers… Until one day it clicked: the issue is the love of God for me. God is scarcely going to sit in heaven noting my slip and enforcing my exclusion; my salvation has cost Him too much for that. That enormous love is the point here. God is for us! With all His care, all His power. And no foe can hope to oppose us successfully, not in the long term.
Paul’s second point is the proof of that. `He who did not spare his own Son’ – and none of us have more than the slightest notion of what that means (though maybe the story of David after Absalom’s death can help here, to understand a tiny bit of what fatherhood might mean to God: `O my son Absalom! My son, my son Absalom! If only I had died instead of you – O Absalom, my son, my son!’ (2 Samuel 18:33)): but that a Being so far above us — a Father so utterly identified with immortal, unfathomable love — should be sundered from His perfect Son, and see Him exposed to infinite agony for us — `He who did not spare His own Son… how will He not also, along with Him, graciously give us all things?’ (v32). Ephesians 1:3 said the same: God has already `blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ’. If His grace extended to giving us Jesus, even to the point of Calvary, then this is love unlimited; nothing else will be withheld. As we saw last week, our destiny is to be given absolutely everything that is good in God’s universe: we are co-heirs with the `heir of all things’, and we will share in all His nature and all His glory…
Thirdly, there is no one left to accuse or condemn us; because God is the prime figure in all these issues, and He is with us, not against us. Indeed Rom 8:32-34 resolve a question that may have struck us back in vv26-27: why does Paul speak there of `He who searches our hearts’? Surely it underlines our security in the divine purposes. God is not destining us for glory because He has fortunately underrated some sin or inadequacy in us. Rather, it is `He who searches our hearts’ who stands with us, intercedes for us (v34 reintroduces this theme from v27), and sees us through to glory. He knows the worst about us, and has paid for it, and now it is forgotten. (Thankyou, Lord!) Here again we sense how Paul’s certainty builds on all he showed us since chapter 6. Indeed the `power of sin is the law’, it is the law’s penalty that could `separate us from the love of Christ’ – and that law has been conclusively dealt with. So there can be no accuser, no condemnation. Nothing can separate us from the love, and the power, of Jesus.
Paul’s last point, in v35ff, is one we may well need in ordinary life. Don’t `trouble or hardship or danger’ make us doubt whether we’re quite so securely `in the love of God’? If we’re the `King’s kids’, these things shouldn’t happen to us? Again the whole chapter’s flow culminates here. Suffering and glory go together (cf 8:17-18), and in this world we aren’t kept permanently out of trouble, any more than Jesus was: `For Your sake we face death all day long.’ Trouble and hardship will come (cf John 16:33); it is `in all these things’ (compare the `in’ of v28), not by being kept safely out of them, that we are `more than conquerors’. Conquerors have to be warriors; and God promises we will be `more than conquerors’ – `more’, perhaps because He not only takes us through the storms, but with infinite skill He even uses the storms…
And so come the sublime final verses. `I am convinced that neither death, nor life, neither angels nor demons’ – in some ministries or countries we may need that assurance – `neither the present, nor the future, nor any powers; neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.’ Hallelujah! The doctrine of eternal security is a much-debated one. Is it true that once we are really born again – that is, not a casual wave of the hand to `accept Jesus’, but a true repentance of heart – then we can never be lost? Or is it possible for a believer to commit spiritual suicide, consciously to reject salvation, to step outside the love of Christ? Scripture isn’t totally clear, and this writer has changed his mind on the question at least twice! But these verses do sound like an extremely secure guarantee. That death cannot separate us from Christ seems plain; but that life cannot, is even more encouraging. Nor can anything in the present, we’re told; nor anything – any deception, any pressure, any breakdown – in the future. Surely that is about as secure as we could be. And the reason is that it is grounded in what matters most of all: we cannot be separated from that colossal love we could never have earned or deserved, the `love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord…‘
Again: Hallelujah! Lord, thankyou for Your astonishing, and invincible, love. Please help me be one through whom the gospel of that love flows continually out into the world…
PS Might `trouble or hardship or danger’ make us doubt whether we’re quite so securely `in the love of God’? This same question will shape Romans 9-11, but on the level of national, not individual, suffering and predestination. If the Jewish nation, the very heirs of the promises, can drift away from Christ, what does that say about a security that is based on God’s Word? Paul responds with the two affirmations that shape ch9. First, `It is not as though God’s Word has failed’ (v6ff); rather, His promises shape history, and ultimately Israel’s history has been shaped by those promises rather than by human actions (eg Abraham’s unwise efforts in conceiving Ishmael, or Jacob’s deceptions). Second, Paul’s reply to `Is God unjust?’- that horrified reaction from his Pharisee opponents to his sidelining of human merits. `Not at all!’ (v14ff), he replies; God is not unjust, indeed the golden calf incident shows Israel retaining their place in God’s purposes by grace alone, not their own deeds or errors. Paul then explains Israel’s situation in detail, leading us to the triumphant reaffirmation of God’s trustworthiness at the end of ch11: `God’s gifts and God’s call are irrevocable!’ (11:29). This is vital for Paul’s Jewish readers who are often in his mind in this epistle (eg 4:1,7:1). But as Leif Andersen observes, it is also a deeply emotional issue – both for Paul himself and for us. `The greater the love, the greater the sorrow. Paul’s leap of joy’ (ch8) `releases the saddest outburst in the whole letter’ in 9:2. The deeper our joy at the glory of ch8, the greater our grief for our neighbours still outside Christ. In this world, glory and grief continue to go together – if we have learned to weep over its lost cities as Jesus did over Jerusalem. More about this next week, as a PS to our Romans series…
PPS The heading to this post is from T S Eliot’s The Elder Statesman. Often regarded as the English-speaking world’s greatest 20th-century poet, and a thoroughly committed Christian.
