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 (He displaces

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

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.

It must now be our 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?'

The word 'for' here is huper, and 'against', kata.  The two

prepositions are used in a similar way in 2 Corinthians 13:8: 'For we can do

nothing against the truth, but for the truth'.

So also in Luke 9:50: 'He that is not against us is for us'.

If anyone should ask, 'in what way has it been demonstrated that God is

for us?' the apostle refers back, in the words, 'these things' to the whole

chapter, and particularly to verses 29 and 30.  In His foreknowledge, His

predestination, His call, and His justification, He is most certainly 'for

us'.  To clinch the matter, however, Paul adds one all -powerful argument:

'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?' (Rom. 8:32).

The word translated 'to spare' (pheidomai) is used in the LXX in

connection with Abraham: 'Thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only son'

(Gen. 22:16).  The Hebrew word chasak, here translated 'withhold' is rendered