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and righteousness is met by the gift of God's Son, Who "by a sacrifice for sin,
condemned sin in the flesh" (Margin, 8: 3). The closing member likewise deals with
the subject of "No condemnation", but approaches it from the experimental standpoint,
viewing it not so much from the angle of the law as in relation to suffering and trial. And
just as "His Son" proved an all-sufficient answer to the failure of the flesh, so again He
provides an all-sufficient answer to the conscious weakness of the flesh. In the opening
section we are "free from the law of sin and death"; in the closing section we are "more
than conquerors" in the midst of tribulation.
The theme of this last section--Rom. 8: 31-39--is developed by a series of
questions and answers, which can be seen best in the form of a structure:
Romans 8: 31-39.
A1 | 31. QUESTION.--What shall we then say to these things?
B1 | 31. ANSWER.--If God be for us, who can be against us?
C1 | 32. Argument: "How?" He spared not His own Son.
A2 | 33. QUESTION.--Who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect?
B2 | 33. ANSWER.--It is God that justifieth.
A3 | 34. QUESTION.--Who is he that condemneth?
B3 | 34. ANSWER.--It is Christ that died.
C2 | 34. Argument: "Yea, rather." Risen. Right Hand. Intercedes.
A4 | 35. QUESTION.--Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?
B4 | 37. ANSWER.--We are more than conquerors in all these things.
C3 | 35-39. Argument: "I am persuaded."
a | Seven phases of earthly trials.
b | O.T. 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 any one 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,