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Romans 8:31 -39
A
31.
question
What shall we then say to these things?
B
31.
answer
If God be for us, who can be against us?
C
32.
argument
How? He spared not His own Son.
A
33.
question
Who shall lay anything to the charge of
God's elect?
B
33.
answer
It is God that justifieth.
A
34.
question
Who is he that condemneth?
B
34.
answer
It is Christ that died.
C
34.
argument
Yea, rather. Risen, Right Hand,
Intercedes.
A
35.
question
Who shall separate us from the love of
Christ?
B
37.
answer
We are more than conquerors
in all these things.
C
35-39. argument
I am
a
Seven phases of earthly trials.
persuaded
b
Old Testament anticipation.
a
Nine phases of unseen trials.
b
Any other creature.
Let us rejoice in the triumph of the believer in this passage, as he
goes from strength to strength. He begins with the great fundamental fact
that 'God is for us', and asks, 'who can be against us?' The question is
unanswerable. It goes echoing down the vaults of time to lose itself in
infinity, without finding anyone able to take up the challenge.
And then -- 'God has justified us'. Here the believer presses forward
into the light of holiness. Though a sinner, he can dare all in the
consciousness of his acceptance in the Beloved. Who can lay anything to his
charge? 'We are more than conquerors through Him that loved us'. His death,
His resurrection, His present place at the right hand of God (the place of
the Accuser -- see Zech. 3:1), His intercession, are all 'for us'. With such
a Saviour, what can tribulation, or distress, or persecution accomplish?
They cannot separate us from the love of Christ. In the teeth of all
opposition, and in the very midst of the trials themselves, we are more than
conquerors.
And what of foes that are unseen and unknown? The apostle scales the
heights, and plumbs the depths, not only of present human experience, as in
verse 35, but of all possible experience, present and future, visible and
invisible, known and unknown, belonging to this creation, or to any other
creation, and with magnificent confidence utters the triumphant, 'I am
persuaded' with which the chapter closes.
The Challenge
It must now be our delightful task to descend from this mountain top,
in order that we may the more clearly understand the language of the apostle,
and so more truly enter into these riches of grace. Let us first look at the
opening challenge:
'If God be For us, who can be Against us?' (Rom. 8:31).