Romans 8

E. The Holy Spirit in the Believer, 8:1–39

This is one of the great chapters in the Bible, and its teaching about the way the Holy Spirit operates in enabling the believer to defeat the forces of evil has always been recognized as of the utmost importance. There are problems in detail, but the main thrust is clear. Paul is saying that a new and wonderful life opens out before those who put their trust in Christ and that this depends heavily on the work of the Spirit of God. An interesting feature of the chapter which is not always noticed is that there is not a single imperative.¹ Paul is talking about life in the Spirit, life in which the Spirit guides so constantly that there is no need for a string of commandments. Griffith Thomas sums it up with some negatives: “as Godet says, the chapter begins with ‘no condemnation,’ and ends with ‘no separation,’ while in between, as C. A. Fox remarks, there is ‘no defeat.’ ”

1. The Opposition of Flesh and Spirit, 8:1–11

¹Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus,^a ²because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death. ³For what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the sinful nature,^b God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering.^c And so he condemned sin in sinful man, ⁴in order that the righteous requirements of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the sinful nature but according to the Spirit.

⁵Those who live according to the sinful nature have their minds set on what that nature desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires. ⁶The mind of sinful man is death, but the mind controlled by the Spirit is life and peace, ⁷because the sinful mind is hostile to God. It does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so. ⁸Those controlled by the sinful nature cannot please God.

⁹You, however, are controlled not by the sinful nature but by the Spirit, if the Spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Christ. ¹⁰But if Christ is in you, your body is dead because of sin, yet your spirit is alive because of righteousness. ¹¹And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit, who lives in you.

In this opening section we find ourselves in a different atmosphere from that in chapter 7. There is still the opposition between good and evil, but the dominant note is that of victory.

1. Therefore links the great chapter on life in the Spirit logically to the preceding. NEB brings out something of the force of it with “the conclusion of the matter is this”. It is possible to take therefore to refer to the immediately preceding words, but most agree that this is not the primary context. It is much more likely that Paul is referring to the whole of the preceding argument. He has taken several chapters to bring out the way God saves us in Christ, and in the light of the whole of that massive argument he can say there is now no condemnation. His now is surely temporal, now in contrast to times gone by before we had entered into the justification Christ brought. It is possibly also in contrast to the time to come. He has a strong eschatological thrust in many places, and he may be hinting that, though we do not as yet experience all the fulness of what salvation in Christ means, we do enjoy all that no condemnation means. Now believers have a wonderful gift of salvation from God in Christ. Condemnation² is a forensic term, including both the sentence and the execution of the sentence. But for believers there is no condemnation at all.³

2. Because⁴ is important; it gives the reason for what Paul has just said. There is no condemnation because of what Christ has done in freeing people from the law that condemns. The law of the Spirit of life is an unusual expression. We have seen that sometimes Paul uses the term “law” in the sense “principle”, though usually with the added idea that there is some element of coercion (cf. AS, “Of a force or influence impelling to action”). Thus “the law of sin” is the rule that governed his conduct, and it made him a prisoner (7:23). The law here then is the principle on which the Holy Spirit works, a principle that operates in power. Spirit here is surely the Holy Spirit,⁵ who is characterized as the Spirit of life, that is, the life-giving Spirit. The presence of the Spirit is the distinguishing mark of the Christian, and this presence means the defeat of the power of sin. Gifford rejects such ideas as that the the law of the Spirit means the gospel (so Hodge) or the plan of salvation, and says it is “the life-giving power of the Holy Ghost, ruling as a law within the heart.” Paul is saying that when the Holy Spirit comes into a person that person is liberated from bondage to evil and finds a new power within, a power that causes the defeat of sin and leads the liberated person into ways of goodness and love. Manson has an interesting summary of Paul’s teaching on various laws: “Moses’ law has right but not might; Sin’s law has might but not right; the law of the Spirit has both right and might.”

It is not completely clear with what we should take “in Christ Jesus”. In the Greek the expression occurs between “the life” and “freed”, and it could be taken with either. We could thus understand it as “the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus freed…” or as “the law of the Spirit of life freed in Christ Jesus….” The former understanding is accepted by Nygren, Boylan, and others. Leenhardt agrees and sees this as meaning “the life-giving Spirit in Christ Jesus” (cf. Haldane). The latter view is favored by Cranfield, Shedd, and others. Either view is a possible understanding of the Greek (so Murray).⁶ Whichever way we take it, the believer was freed (the aorist points to a decisive act) from the law of sin (cf. 7:23, 25) and death (cf. 7:10–11, 13). The last word is not with sin or with death. While believers are not sinless, they have real liberation in Christ (cf. 6:18, 22). There is a textual problem as to what we should read after “freed”, the manuscripts being divided between “me” and “you”. While certainty is not attainable, it seems best to accept “you”.⁷ Not much depends on the point because either way Paul clearly means the term to apply to any believer.⁸

3. For⁹ introduces the reason for the preceding statement. It is what God did in Christ that brings about the liberation of which Paul has just been speaking. Paul begins this part of his argument with a very difficult Greek expression rendered what the law was powerless to do.¹⁰ Fortunately the obscurity of the Greek grammar does not extend to the sense. Paul is saying that there is something that the law of Moses (or for that matter, any law) simply could not do, and that God has now done that thing. The reason¹¹ for the law’s failure is that it was “weak through the flesh”. Consistently Paul sees “the flesh” not as evil, but as weak—so weak, he is saying here, that the law could not bring about salvation. The fault is not in the law, but in the flesh. Previously he praised the law as good (7:12), and the same view underlies this passage.

Paul proceeds to inform his readers that God condemned sin, and did so by sending his own¹² Son. Own is important, pointing as it does to the close relationship between the Father and the Son. It was no remote messenger that God sent, but the Son who stood in a unique relationship to him. As Hunter says, he is “the Son by nature, as we are sons by grace.” Paul does not often use the concept of God’s sending of his Son, but the idea is clear here. He says further that God sent him “in the likeness of sinful flesh”, an expression that has caused a great deal of discussion.¹³ On the one hand there are those who emphasize “sinful flesh”, and consider this expression important if we are to see Jesus as really “one of us”. Unless this is taken realistically, it is contended, Christ did not really become man, for humanity’s flesh is invariably “sinful flesh”.¹⁴ On the other hand it is pointed out that unless Christ was sinless he could not be our Savior; he would need to be saved himself. So our passage is something of a minefield where it is necessary to tread carefully. We cannot take the view that Jesus was no more than just another man, sinful as we are. Paul certainly held that Jesus was sinless (2 Cor. 5:21). Nor can we see him (as the Docetists did) as of a different order from us. He came right where we are. Stott comments on the expression, “Not ‘in sinful flesh’, because the flesh of Jesus was sinless. Nor ‘in the likeness of flesh’, because the flesh of Jesus was real. But ‘in the likeness of sinful flesh’, because the flesh of Jesus was both sinless and real.” We must bear in mind that Paul is not giving us a full explanation of his understanding of the incarnation; he is talking about the way Christ saved us in his death.¹⁵

God sent him, further, to be a sin offering. This translation of NIV depends on the fact that the expression Paul uses here¹⁶ is the regular translation in LXX of the Hebrew expression for “sin offering”. NIV may well be correct, but we find nothing in the context that prepares us for anything as specific as this, or indeed for a reference to the sacrificial system at all. Would the Roman Christians have been expected to detect the allusion? It seems more likely that we should take the words as they are: “for sin”, that is, to deal with sin, whatever that involved. We know that Christ’s sacrifice may fittingly be called a “sin offering”, but that does not mean that that is what Paul is calling it here. When God sent his Son in this way, Paul says, he “condemned sin in the flesh”. We should take “in the flesh” with “condemned”; we are not to think that some “sin in the flesh” is condemned and other sin is not. It was what Jesus did “in the flesh” that condemned sin. Paul is now picturing sin as a litigant in a law court; the verdict goes against sin and thus sin is condemned. “Condemned” here means more than that a form of words goes against it. There is the thought that the condemnation is brought into effect (as when a derelict building is “condemned”; it is used no more, and demolition follows).¹⁷

4. In order that¹⁸ introduces the divine purpose, and since that purpose never fails of fulfilment, it points us to the result as well. How the righteous requirements¹⁹ of the law are fully met in us should be interpreted is a matter of dispute. Shedd is typical of many when he sees the fulfilment as “vicarious, and not a personal performance” (so Calvin, Hodge, and others). The thought is that only Christ perfectly met the law’s requirements and that accordingly the reference here must be to him and not to anything the believer does. Justification, not sanctification, is in view. Others, however, argue that Paul is here referring to what happens to the person who is in Christ. Bruce puts it this way: “God’s commands have now become God’s enablings” (so Hendriksen, Lloyd-Jones, Denney, and others). Reformed theologians have stressed that justification and sanctification are not to be separated, and it seems that this is what Paul is saying here. In the full sense only Christ has fulfilled all the law’s requirements, but when we are in him we in our measure begin to live the kind of life that God would have us live. Notice that Paul does not say “we fulfil the law’s righteous requirement”, but that “the righteous requirement of the law is fulfilled in us”, surely pointing to the work of the Holy Spirit in the believer. Before we came to know Christ we were continually defeated by sin. When we came to know him and to receive the indwelling Holy Spirit we were able to attain a standard we could never reach in our own strength. In interpreting these words the emphasis on the way the Christian life is lived that is so stressed in this part of the letter is important. Earlier Paul spoke of establishing the law (3:31). There is something like that here, too.

The fulfilment in question is in us, not in all people, and this is further defined as “who walk, not according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit.” Paul finds the metaphor of walking congenial as a way of bringing out the steady if unspectacular progress that characterizes the Christian way (cf. 6:4; 1 Cor. 7:17; 2 Cor. 5:7, etc.). The believer does not walk “according to the flesh”.²⁰ There is, of course, a sense in which he is “in the flesh” (cf. 2 Cor. 10:3), and Paul can go so far as to speak of “Christ, according to the flesh” (9:5). But to live with our horizons bounded by the requirements of this fleshly life is quite another thing, and it is this that Paul has in mind here. The person outside Christ sees nothing beyond the here and now and, however altruistic he may be, in the end is wrapped up in the things he wants or on which he has set his seal of approval.²¹

Not so the Christian. The believer walks according to the Spirit. Some take this to mean “the principle of holiness in the regenerate” (Shedd; so Chrysostom, Bengel; cf. Lenski, “As flesh is the old nature, so spirit is the new”). But all such views founder on the fact that through this whole chapter runs the thought that believers are not left to live the Christian life in their own strength. The Holy Spirit dwells in them and enables them to live on a standard they could never attain left to themselves. It is this life, lived in accordance with all that the Holy Spirit means, of which Paul writes.

5. Verses 5–8 form a closely knit section, with a series of conjunctions tying the various members together. “For”²² (which NIV omits) connects it with the previous words; Paul is now about to cite evidence to support what he has just said. In verse 4 Paul had spoken of walking “according to the flesh”; there is a slight change now when he refers to those who “are according to the flesh”, but there is not much difference in meaning. The expression he uses here perhaps conveys a hint at what these people are rather than what they do, but we should not press this. Paul still has in mind that those whose lives are dominated by “flesh” are strongly opposed to the things of God. His list of “the works of the flesh” in Galatians 5:19–21 shows that we must not think only of gross sensuality, for Paul includes such things as enmity, jealousy, and anger. There are many ways of manifesting a disposition that is confined to the flesh. Those in the flesh, he now says, have their minds set on²³ the things of the flesh. They are preoccupied with the flesh; they concentrate on the flesh to the exclusion of all else. It is this verb that Jesus uses of Peter when that apostle rebuked him at Caesarea Philippi, “your mind is not set on the things of God but the things of men” (Matt. 16:23). Peter was not being desperately wicked, but he was looking at things from a completely worldly point of view. Paul is saying something of the sort about fleshly people. They may have good intentions, but their horizon is bounded by the things of this life. The flesh is the focus of their whole life. And because they are concentrating on this fleshly life, they cut themselves off from the blessings Christ offers.

Paul has a corresponding saying about those who “are according to the Spirit.”²⁴ Such people are not intermittently interested in the things of the Spirit; their whole being centers on them. What the Spirit does is their absorbing interest. We should not understand this as a self-centered concentration on the piece of Christian work in which they are engaged. It is rather a delighted contemplation of what the Spirit does wherever the Spirit chooses to move. It is the very opposite of a concentration on oneself, even on the service one renders to God.

6. The significance of Paul’s “For” here is not as obvious as that of the one at the head of the previous verse (Lagrange and Boylan find it difficult). Probably, as Cranfield puts it, “it is intended as explanation of the opposition between the Spirit and the flesh presupposed in v. 5.” The apostle changes his form of expression slightly when he speaks of the mind²⁵ of the flesh. The thought is of a thoroughgoing concentration on the flesh, the things that pertain to this life. This, Paul says starkly, is death (so RSV). There is no verb in the Greek, but NIV seems to have the meaning with is. GNB reads “results in death”, NEB “spells death”, and Moffatt “mean death”. But Paul does not seem to be referring to the consequences of having the mind of the flesh. He is saying that to be bounded by the flesh is itself death. It is a cutting off of oneself from the life that is life indeed.

The opposite of the mind that is death is “the mind of the Spirit”, which, Paul says, “is life and peace.” Again the thought is of thoroughgoing concentration. When the things of God dominate one’s outlook, when one is constantly responsive to the direction of the Spirit, then there is life. This is the opposite of the death that concentration on the flesh means. Just as the flesh brings death, so the Spirit brings life. But Paul does not leave the antithesis there. The believer has peace as well as life. Paul spoke earlier of peace with God (5:1), but there is general agreement that this is not what he has in mind here. It will be the basis of the peace he now deals with, for without peace with God there could not be the life and peace which the Spirit brings. This peace will mean the enjoyment of all that reconciliation with God means, a peace that pervades the whole of life and cannot be dispelled by the conflicts life brings.²⁶ We are reminded of the way Paul so constantly links peace with grace in his salutations.

7. Again this verse is linked to the preceding, this time with because.²⁷ We have been told that “the mind of the flesh is death” (v. 6), and now we find that it is “enmity” towards God.²⁸ It is not simply being slightly uncooperative; it is downright hostility. It means being in the opposite camp, refusing to be subject to God’s law. “In withdrawing from God,” Brunner writes, “I eliminate him so far as I am concerned. I am hostile to him.” Paul explains the hostility in that this “mind” does not submit to God’s law. The implication is that it ought to do this. That is the common lot of man. God has given his law so that people may know what is right and submit to it. But the person whose general bent is towards the things of this earth, fleshly things, the person dominated by his fallenness, is by that very fact rebellious against God’s law.²⁹ Indeed, Paul says, such a mind cannot submit to God. By definition it is set on a contrary course. There is no possibility that anyone will at the same time set the course of his life on the merely fleshly and be obedient to God. This does not mean being horribly and blatantly wicked. Bowen quotes Bernard of Clairvaux: “So far from being able to answer for my sins, I cannot even answer for my righteousness!” People may do good with completely wrong motives; they may try to “gain control over God by paying Him His fee.” Bernard was concerned lest his good deeds be tainted by self-seeking motives, a danger to which we are all subject.

8. There is disagreement on the way we should understand the link with the previous verse.³⁰ AV has “so then”, Godet suggests “and on the other hand”, Barrett “It follows that”, Cranfield simply “and”; many, like NIV, simply omit the connective. It seems that Paul is just carrying on the argument, so that “and” is as good an understanding as any. This verse rounds off this section of the argument with the flat statement: “those who are in the flesh cannot please God.” This repeats what Paul has just said with some small alterations.³¹ The apostle is still concerned that those whose interests are earth-bound cut themselves off from fellowship with God and from the blessings that follow. To be wholly involved in this life is to make it impossible to please God.³²

9. You, however,³³ points a sharp contrast. Paul has been speaking of the fleshly minded; now he turns away from the worldly to the life of believers. He expresses his confidence in the Romans by his use of the emphatic you; whatever be the case with others, they do not come under the condemnation of being “in the flesh”.³⁴ There is, of course, a sense in which they are “in the flesh”. They live this bodily life as all people do. But they are not bound to it, not characterized by it. They do not belong to it. On the contrary, they are “in the Spirit”.³⁵ Parry sees a reference to the human spirit. In contrast to those who live according to the flesh the Roman Christians have set their minds on higher things, on the things that concern their spirits. But Paul is surely referring rather to the Spirit of God. Their life as Christians is “in the Spirit”. Earlier he has spoken of believers as being “in Christ” (v. 1). Here he goes on to speak of the Spirit as “in” believers. He can also speak of Christ as “in” his people (v. 10; Gal. 2:20), and of the Spirit as likewise “in” them (here). Paul clearly has the thought of a mutual indwelling; he simply varies the terminology in which he expresses it. His habit, however, is to speak of believers as in Christ (rather than Christ in them) and of the Spirit as in believers (rather than they in him).³⁶ Whichever way he puts it, believers live very close to God and the constant presence of God is important.

If the Spirit of God lives in you is not a way of throwing doubt on the divine indwelling. Paul’s if³⁷ means “if (as is the case)”. Over against the life in the flesh of which he has been speaking Paul sets life in the Spirit, life of a different quality, life made possible only because the Spirit of God has come to live in believers. Lives³⁸ is important. The Spirit is not an occasional visitor; he takes up residence in God’s people.

Paul proceeds to consider another possibility. If anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Christ. Notice the “characteristic delicacy of expression” (SH); Paul used “you” when speaking of those who are not in the flesh, but now “anyone” as he refers to those who do not have the Spirit. The Spirit of Christ is not a common expression (but cf. Acts 16:7; Phil. 1:19; 1 Pet. 1:11). Spirit, of course, is to be spelled with a capital, for the word refers to the Holy Spirit (though Schonfield has “spirit of Christ”; this would mean “if anyone does not live in the same way, in the same spirit as Christ”). The Spirit of Christ is another way of referring to the Spirit of God. The doctrine of the Trinity had not yet been formulated, but it is this kind of expression that led Christians in due time to speak of God as triune.³⁹ Paul sees the Spirit as integrally related to Christ as well as to the Father. We receive him on the basis of Christ’s saving work, and without that there would be no activity of the Spirit in the specifically Christian sense (cf. John 7:39).⁴⁰ The verb have, like lives earlier in the verse, points to more than a passing contact. There is the thought of continuity. Of anyone who lacks the Spirit Paul says, “he is no Christian” (NEB). He does not belong. The presence of the Spirit in believers is not an interesting extra to be seen in a few unusual people (as in the case of the “pneumatic” men of some ancient religions). It is the normal and necessary feature of being a Christian at all.

10. As Paul returns to the positive he returns to direct address (you). His But makes a contrast with what has gone before; he is speaking now of the believer, the one in whom Christ is. There seems little difference between the indwelling of Christ and that of the Holy Spirit. The indwelling of the Spirit is mentioned both before and after this verse, and there is no indication of a change of subject. Paul is not identifying Christ with the Spirit, but he is saying that in the indwelling of the Spirit none less than Christ is present. “ ‘Spirit in you’ is impossible apart from ‘Christ in you’. Union with Christ is the only way into the life of the Age to Come, of which the distinguishing mark is the Spirit” (Barrett). Dodd agrees that Paul is not identifying Christ with the Spirit, but “his virtual identification of the experience of the Spirit with the experience of the indwelling Christ is of the utmost value. It saved Christian thought from falling into a non-moral, half-magical conception of the supernatural in human experience, and it brought all ‘spiritual’ experience to the test of the historical revelation of God in Jesus Christ.”⁴¹

When Christ is in you, says Paul, your body is dead because of sin.⁴² This is a difficult expression. We should probably take it as a subordinate clause, “though the body…” (as RSV, NEB, Moffatt, etc.). But the big question is the meaning of dead. The body has been characterized as the body of sin (6:6), the body in which sin reigns (6:12), this body of death from which Paul longs to be delivered (7:24), and he will go on to speak of it as the body whose deeds are to be mortified by the Spirit (v. 13). When anyone is in Christ this body is not supreme, and it is possible to take the words here to mean that this body is dead, utterly overcome. The difficulty with this exegesis is the following because of sin. We are delivered from sin, not because of it. We should accordingly take death to be physical death. Because we have sinned we will die, but this is not the really significant thing.⁴³ That is rather that “the Spirit is life because of righteousness.” The question here is whether Paul is referring to the human spirit (as NIV, Hodge, Hunter, and others) or to the Holy Spirit (with Calvin, Murray, Barrett, etc.). The contrast with “body” leads many to affirm that the human spirit must be in view here, and that would make a fine antithesis. Against this is the fact that in verses 9–11 every other use of pneuma refers to the Holy Spirit. Further, Paul does not say “is alive” but “is life”. This is something that can be said of the Holy Spirit, but the human spirit is not “life”.⁴⁴

There is some discussion as to the meaning of righteousness here. It may be the righteousness that is imputed to believers when they become Christians (so, e.g., Lenski). It may be the righteousness believers demonstrate in daily life (Lagrange). Or this may be asking the wrong question. It is possible that Paul is not distinguishing between one form of righteousness and another. A good deal of his argument in the previous chapters depends on the fact that justification and sanctification are not to be separated. The believer is credited with “the righteousness of God”; it is this that brings him into the sphere of salvation. But then he is required to live a life that is in conformity with this salvation; he cannot be indifferent to the importance of righteousness in his daily living. At this point it may well be that Paul has in mind neither the process that brings salvation, nor the life that follows, but both.⁴⁵

11. Once again Paul’s if has the meaning “if (as is the case)”.⁴⁶ He goes on to relate the Spirit to the Father (cf. 1 Cor. 2:11; 12:3, etc.), as in verse 9 he related him to Christ. The Father is characterized by his raising of Jesus. It is usual in the New Testament to ascribe the resurrection to the Father, though we should not overlook the fact that Jesus said he had power to lay down his life and take it up again (John 10:17–18), nor that on occasion it is said that he rose (14:9; Acts 10:41; 1 Thess. 4:14). The Spirit, then, of the resurrecting Father “lives” in the Roman Christians. He does not pay a fleeting visit, but “has its home” (Way) in them.

Paul goes on to the further point that the Father (again characterized as having raised Christ)⁴⁷ will in due course raise believers too (for this link, cf. 1 Cor. 6:14; 2 Cor. 4:14; 1 Thess. 4:14). But where he speaks of God as “raising” Jesus, he speaks of him as “giving life” to believers. We stand in a relation to death different from that of “the Prince of life” (Acts 3:15); we need not only to be raised, but to be given life.⁴⁸ God will give life, Paul says, to our mortal bodies, where the adjective may be significant. At the resurrection our bodies will not only cease to be dead but to be liable to death.

The Spirit is not usually linked with resurrection, but here he seems to be. It is not clear whether Paul is saying that the Spirit is to be the agent in raising us or the guarantee that we will be raised.⁴⁹ Both are true, and it does not seem to matter greatly which way we resolve the textual problem.

2. The Family of God, 8:12–17

¹²Therefore, brothers, we have an obligation—but it is not to the sinful nature, to live according to it. ¹³For if you live according to the sinful nature, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live, ¹⁴because those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. ¹⁵For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship.^a And by him we cry, “Abba,^b Father.” ¹⁶The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children. ¹⁷Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory.

Having made it clear that Christ gives life to believers, Paul goes on to bring out some of the implications of all this. It is important that those who are Christ’s live as those who are Christ’s. Paul reminds us of the obligations that rest upon us and of the place of mortification in the Christian life. And that brings us to the Holy Spirit, for it is what the Spirit does in us that enables us to render the service to which we are called.

12. Paul’s “wherefore therefore” (see on 5:18) introduces the logical consequences. This paragraph is closely connected with the preceding. His “we” links Paul with his readers, whom he addresses with the affectionate brothers (see on 1:13). Then he moves to the thought of obligation, though the word would better be rendered “debtors”.⁵⁰ The justification for NIV is that no monetary debt is in question. But certainly the note of obligation is strong. Paul is laying it down firmly that for Christians the flesh has no rights; as Earle puts it, “we owe the flesh nothing”. The way Paul puts it, “we are debtors, not to the flesh—”, leads us to look for “but to the Spirit” or for some other expression to indicate where our debt lies, “but this is elegantly left to be understood” (Bengel). The characteristic life of the Christian owes nothing to the flesh, though we should not ignore the force of this warning about “the flesh” in a letter to Christians. “The flesh” is not eradicated but is an ever-present reality. Paul goes on to explain that to be indebted to the flesh means “to live according to the flesh”. This is not an option for the believer.⁵¹

13. There is a change from “we” to “you” as Paul turns to the link between living the fleshly life and death. This does not mean that he saw the Romans as living the unregenerate life; Lloyd-Jones sees “a general statement comparable to the form of speech which we use when we say to a person, ‘If you put your finger into that fire you will be burned’ ” (p. 109). But there is certainly a strong note of warning. To live “according to the flesh”⁵² is to live with one’s horizon bounded by the flesh, that is, by the concerns of this life. To live like this is death (cf. 1 Tim. 5:6). There is certainty in you will die,⁵³ “a sure effect from the given cause” (CBSC).

The contrary supposition is made with equal definiteness. If you mortify (“put to death”, GNB)⁵⁴ the body’s deeds you will live. The verb may be used of literally putting a person to death (Luke 21:16 etc.), or of undergoing the danger of death (v. 36). Mortifying deeds means killing them off, getting rid of them altogether. But the tense is present, which indicates a continuing activity. It is not something that we can do once and for all and be done with. It is a daily duty. What is to be killed is “the deeds of the body”. NIV has misdeeds, a translation that can be defended, for the word is sometimes used of evil actions (as in Luke 23:51).⁵⁵ Such actions are the objects of decisive and hostile action as far as the believer is concerned. There is to be no life in the deeds in question. They are not living options. And this is to take place through an action of the believer (“you put to death”), though not an unaided action, for the mortification is to be done “by the Spirit”. It is the energy of the divine Spirit, not the energy of the flesh, that enables the believer to put the body’s deeds to death.⁵⁶ Paul speaks of the body, not the “flesh”; he probably has in mind the fact that the body is “this body of death” (7:24, where see note; it is this body that he buffets and keeps under control, 1 Cor. 9:27). If you do this, Paul says, you will live. Real life is not a possibility when we choose to luxuriate in the body’s deeds. We must renounce all such deeds if we are to experience life in the Spirit. This is not because some meritorious achievement is required of us as a way of earning such life. It is because the two are incompatible. The one excludes the other. There is a living that is death and there is a putting to death that is life.

14. Because⁵⁷ carries on the logical sequence; it introduces the basis for saying, “you will live”. Those translates a comprehensive term⁵⁸ which is better rendered “all who” (NEB) or “Everyone” (JB). Paul admits of no exception. The people he is describing are led by the Spirit of God.⁵⁹ Most commentators agree that we should understand Paul to mean that the Spirit “leads” people, but Käsemann argues for “drives”: “The phrase ‘driven by the Spirit’ in v. 14 is taken from the vocabulary of the enthusiasts according to 1 Cor 12:2. It therefore should not be weakened to ‘be led by’ ” (p. 226). But it is not easy to see why this verse should be interpreted by the very difficult 1 Corinthians 12:2. Käsemann gives no reason for thinking that the “enthusiasts” of Corinth should not only be understood to be in Rome but also to be so important there that they became the objects of Paul’s writing. The vocabulary is against him, too.⁶⁰ We can say with Haldane, “we are naturally so indisposed to go to Jesus Christ, that it is necessary that God, by His Spirit, draw us to Him”, but this is a long way from “driven”. Paul is saying that what this verb conveys is true of all believers and, while we may fairly apply “driven” to a few ecstatics, it is not an accurate description of the typical Christian experience. Elsewhere Paul says, “if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under law” (Gal. 5:18), where the note is freedom rather than compulsion. With a different verb we read in the discourse in the Upper Room of the Spirit leading believers in (or into) all the truth (John 16:13). Such passages emphasize that it is the Spirit who shows us the way. We are not left to our own wisdom (or the lack of it). It is these people, then, those led by the Spirit, who are sons of God. NASB has, “these are sons of God”, retaining a pronoun which puts some emphasis on the fact that they really are God’s sons. We should understand the leading of the Spirit as a distinguishing sign of God’s sons, but not as making us sons. It is “Because you are sons” that “God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts” (Gal. 4:6). As in verse 9, the work of the Spirit is not an option or an extra for the advanced Christian. Being led by the Spirit is a mark of all God’s people. Earle sees the result in their conduct: “They not only belong to the family but act like it!” We should not miss the note of the great dignity attaching to believers. From verse 13 we learn that they do not die. But being a Christian is more than a negative, the fact that they do not die. It is a wonderful positive, being admitted into the family of God. Paul does not often call believers “sons of God” (but cf. v. 19; 9:26; 2 Cor. 6:18; Gal. 3:26).

15. This is the third verse in succession to be introduced by “for”.⁶¹ As Paul elaborates on sonship to God, he uses a closely knit argument. He speaks of receiving, where his aorist tense points to a definite time, probably that of conversion. But there are problems with his use of “spirit”, and commentators are divided. We could use a small “s” in both instances in this verse and understand the apostle to mean “a temper, mood or state” (the “spirit of slavery”, NBCR), or translate “the spirit of slaves … the spirit of sons” (as JB; NASB is similar). Or we could take the first with a small “s” and the second with a capital, as Moffatt, “You have received no slavish spirit … you have received the Spirit of sonship” (so NIV). Or we could use the capital both times, as Murray. Or, again, we could render, “Ye did not receive the Holy Spirit as a Spirit of bondage but as the Spirit of adoption” (so TH). Any of these must remain a possibility. But throughout this whole passage the emphasis is on the work of the Holy Spirit, and it seems that Paul is here saying two things about the Spirit: first, negatively, that the Spirit believers received is not one of bondage; second, positively, he is a Spirit of sonship (for the Spirit believers receive cf. 1 Cor. 2:12; 2 Tim. 1:7). The Spirit does not make people slaves but sons.

Slavery would have meant a good deal more to Paul’s readers, who were in daily contact with it, than it does to us. Paul has been arguing that they have been given a wonderful freedom in Christ, a freedom they may enjoy to the full even if in their physical existence they were in fact slaves. We might not have expected him to say again, but the word is apparently being used in the sense of “back” and refers to a reversion to the state from which they had been delivered.⁶² Christ had freed them from their bondage to sin; they must not think that the Spirit would lead them back to it. Paul has, of course, used slavery as a way of describing the wholeheartedness of Christian service (1:1; 6:19; 7:6). Paradoxically this is real freedom, as Käsemann points out: “Radical obedience is pointedly defined as slavery. But insofar as this is offered to the gracious Lord as a joyful sacrifice (1 Cor 9:17), it also denotes genuine freedom and sonship” (p. 227). It is not this that Paul has in mind when he refers to “a spirit of slavery”. Rather, he is thinking of what sin does to a person. This state is further described as to fear, for slavery to sin inevitably leads to fear. John tells us that there is no fear in love and that perfect love casts fear out (1 John 4:18). Paul is saying that the leading of the Spirit delivers from fear and does not take us back to it again.

On the contrary,⁶³ believers received “the Spirit of adoption”. The word for “adoption” is used only by Paul in the New Testament (five times, three being in Romans), and it does not occur in LXX, for the Jews did not practise adoption. Some Old Testament examples are suggested,⁶⁴ but most scholars agree that Paul took the concept from Roman or Greek law in both which adoption was important. Francis Lyall argues convincingly that Paul’s concept is taken from Roman, not Jewish law.⁶⁵ Most agree, though some think rather of Greek law. SH cite E. L. Hicks for the information that “No word is more common in Greek inscriptions of the Hellenistic time: the idea, like the word, is native Greek”.⁶⁶ It is a useful word for Paul, for it signifies being granted the full rights and privileges of sonship in a family to which one does not belong by nature. This is a good illustration of one aspect of Paul’s understanding of what it means to become a Christian. The believer is admitted to the heavenly family, to which he has no rights of his own. But he is now admitted and can call God “Father”.

Paul goes on, by him⁶⁷ we cry, “Abba, Father” (an expression found again in Mark 14:36; Gal. 4:6). There has been some discussion of the verb cry, which is perhaps not what we would have expected. It may well point to the emotion involved in the uttering of the cry in question. It is also true that the verb is used a number of times of crying to God in prayer (Ps. 3:4; 4:3, etc.), and it would make a lot of sense if we were to think of Paul as referring to the fervent prayer of the believer (cf. Denney’s comment, “We have not only the status, but the heart of sons”). Paul certainly has prayer in mind, for who else would Christians address in this way? But there seems no reason to think of ecstatic utterance, as some have suggested.⁶⁸ It is the fervent utterance of the devout believer that he has in mind.

The word Abba is an Aramaic word meaning “Father”.⁶⁹ The word is from the babbling of a little child (like “papa”) and is the familiar term used in the home. But before we assume that it was used much like our “Papa” or “Daddy”, we should reflect that the head of a family was an august figure in first-century society (the Roman paterfamilias still had the right to put members of his household to death, even if the right was used rarely; cf. Gen. 38:24). But the word certainly points to love and to intimacy. The Jews would not address God in this familiar way, but when they prayed to him as “Father” they always added something like “in heaven” to avoid any impression of undue presumption. In the Gospels Jesus constantly addresses God as “Father”, and in Gethsemane he has this doubled form, “Abba, Father” (Mark 14:36). It is probable that the opening of the Lord’s Prayer in the language Jesus spoke would be this “Abba”; if so, Jesus was giving his followers the privilege of being in the heavenly family and of addressing God in this warm and familiar way.⁷⁰ As G. Schrenk says, “an everyday infant sound is applied without inhibition to God…. This basic word tells us that God is not a distant Ruler in transcendence but One who is intimately close. Unconditional faith in the Father is thus taken seriously.”⁷¹ We should not overlook the fact that in this passage Paul puts the Father at the center. The Spirit does not cause us to cry “I am God’s son”, but “God is my Father.” The believer looks at God rather than contemplating himself. The repetition of the word, once in Aramaic and once in Greek, is probably not to be seen as a translation, for translation is out of place in prayer. Rather, the word was repeated. We need not be surprised at the use of an Aramaic term by Greek-speaking people, for we do much the same when we say “Amen”, or “Hallelujah”.

16. This time there is no connecting word, and the asyndeton perhaps gives added weight to what is being said. Paul proceeds to say that the Spirit himself bears witness, where the pronoun puts emphasis on the truth that it is none less than the Spirit. There is a problem as to whether we should understand him to say that the Spirit bears witness “to” our spirit or that he bears witness “with” our spirit. The form of the verb might be held to favor the latter, but this is not conclusive.⁷² Great names can be urged in favor of “with our spirit” (as Hunter, Haldane, Murray, and others; cf. NEB, JB, Moffatt). But the thought that the Spirit bears witness to our spirit and thus enables us to cry “Abba, Father” is the view of Luther, Calvin, Hodge, Leenhardt, and others. We cannot stand alongside the Holy Spirit and give testimony. Perhaps the decisive point is that put forward by Cranfield, who asks, “what standing has our spirit in this matter?” Unaided, we cannot testify to the reality of our standing before God. But we are not unaided; the Spirit of God testifies to our Spirit and gives us the assurance of our membership in the heavenly family. There is a direct operation of the Holy Spirit on our spirit. The content of that testimony is that we are God’s children. The change from “sons” (v. 14) to children is probably not significant, though, as Black points out, “children” includes daughters as well as sons. As we saw on verse 14, Paul uses the expression “sons of God” five times. He has “children of God” four times (8:16, 21; 9:8; Phil. 2:15; it also occurs twice in John and four times in 1 John). Neither expression can be said to be very common. Though membership in the heavenly family is real and important, the New Testament writers prefer to express it otherwise than by calling believers either “sons” or “children” of God.

17. Paul proceeds to unfold some of the implications of being members of God’s family. If we are children, he says, we are also⁷³ heirs. The word properly denotes those who receive property as a result of the death of someone else, but F. J. A. Hort points out that in the Old Testament the concept of inheritance “apparently contains no implication of hereditary succession, as it does usually in classical Greek. The sense is rather ‘sanctioned and settled possession.’ ”⁷⁴ The concept of inheritance is an important one in the Old Testament, and it carries over into the New Testament. SH point out that it originally meant “simple possession of the Holy Land”, but later came to mean “its permanent and assured possession” (Ps. 25:13; 37:9, 11, etc.). It especially denoted “the secure possession won by the Messiah” (Isa. 60:21; 61:7), and thus it became “a symbol of all Messianic blessings” (Matt. 5:5; 19:29; 25:34, etc.). Paul uses the term here to denote full possession of all that sonship means in the new age, but it is not so much ownership as relationship that he has in mind. He speaks of being heirs of God, a bold piece of imagery, found here only in the New Testament (though cf. Gal. 4:7). Since God does not die, there is no question of inheritance in the strict sense of the term. But the heir is in a position of privilege as a result of his place in the family. Paul has been speaking of “sons” and of “children”; we are in a privileged position because of our membership in the family of none less than God. We are also co-heirs with Christ. It is difficult to see what possessions we share as fellow heirs with Christ; the title is surely one of dignity, assuring us of our place in the heavenly family where he is the Son (he also spoke of himself in a parable as heir, Matt. 21:38).

But to this picture of privilege Paul immediately adds another consideration: if indeed we share in his sufferings.⁷⁵ Neither Paul nor any other New Testament writer lets us forget that believers have no easy path. Their Master suffered, and they are called to suffering, too. This is not some perverse accident but an integral part of discipleship. But this suffering is in some way linked to the sufferings of Christ (2 Cor. 1:5; Phil. 3:10; Col. 1:24; 2 Tim. 2:11–12; cf. Mark 10:39). It is interesting that, when Saul of Tarsus was persecuting the church, the Christ who met him on the Damascus road asked him, “why do you persecute me?” (Acts 9:4). He is one with us in our sufferings. But also “we died with Christ” (6:8). We are one with him in his death. But our sufferings are not meaningless. We suffer in order that⁷⁶ we may also share in his glory. The path of suffering is the path to glory.

3. The Glorious Future, 8:18–25

¹⁸I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. ¹⁹The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. ²⁰For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope ²¹that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.

²²We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. ²³Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. ²⁴For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what he already has? ²⁵But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.

It is a wonderful thing to belong to God’s family, to be “heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ” (v. 17). Paul might well have gone from this thought to the magnificent vista that it opens out before us, and so he does in due course. But he was not unmindful that our heavenly destiny does not blot out the fact of our earthly existence and that that earthly existence is in a troubled world. This world is full of pain and misery, and they are not confined to human existence. Paul recognizes that there is pain throughout creation, and he writes movingly about it: “here we have, as nowhere else in the Bible—perhaps nowhere in ancient literature—a man who feels with the pain of creation” (Gore). But for Paul the great thing is that this is not meaningless pain, and he could look forward with confidence to the final unfolding of the purpose of God. He is sure of this, despite the pains of the present. Denney cites R. A. Lipsius for the “threefold testimony to the future transfiguration” that he discerns here, in verses 19–22 “the sighing of creation”, 23–25 “the yearning hope of Christians themselves”, and in 26–27 “the intercession of the Spirit”.

18. Contemplation of the future privileges of the believer leads Paul to think of the contrast this makes with the present state. He shows that suffering is the path we tread as we move to blessing and to glory. Since the early Christians led a somewhat precarious existence, it may well be that the contemplation of the future glory was very precious to them. Paul links this to the preceding with a conjunction giving the reason for the foregoing.⁷⁷ I consider should not be taken as a mere matter of personal opinion. There is, to be sure, the thought of a calculation, a mental weighing of the evidence, but the word here “expresses strong assurance and not doubt” (TH).⁷⁸ Paul speaks of our present sufferings, which means the sufferings characteristic of this present age⁷⁹ rather than the present moment. There is no reason to think that the circumstances in which he wrote were especially significant, but this age is in marked contrast to the age to come. Paul holds that the believer must expect sufferings in this present age. There is suffering that is the direct result of our sinning and there is suffering that we endure for Christ’s sake, suffering that arises directly from our Christian profession in a world that rejects Christ. But beyond that, there is suffering that arises simply because we are in this imperfect world. Paul is realistic; there is no reason to think that Christians will be free from troubles in this present life. It is important, therefore, that they learn how to bear them.

Paul sets these sufferings over against the coming glory, saying that they are not worth⁸⁰ comparing with it.⁸¹ Troublesome as they are to us who experience them, they are of no weight when set over against the glory that awaits God’s people. Paul also has this idea elsewhere; he speaks of “our light and momentary troubles” as “achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all” (2 Cor. 4:17). So here he looks forward to the glory that will be revealed. There is a touch of certainty about will, which is not simply the future but a separate verb.⁸² The glory will be revealed,⁸³ not created. The implication is that it is already existent, but not apparent. The Jews had some very materialistic ideas of what life would be like in the coming age, and there are some striking sayings which emphasize unusual fruitfulness in vines and the like. Paul is just as certain of the glory, but he does not see it in any materialistic way. The glory, he says, will be revealed in us, where his preposition is not the one we might have expected.⁸⁴ He may mean that in the coming age all that is involved in our being “sons of God” will become apparent and that this will be a revelation in us as well as to us.

19. Another “for” (again omitted by NIV) carries on the chain of reasoning. There is much to be said for the view that the whole of verses 19–30 supports what has been said in verse 18. Paul uses a most unusual word⁸⁵ to convey the thought of persistent and eager expectation. This expectation he ascribes to the creation,⁸⁶ a term which has caused a good deal of discussion. It is broad enough to include everything that God has created, but not many see such a wide meaning here. Thus it is hard to envision good angels as being included, for they were not subjected to the “frustration” of verse 20. Evil angels are surely not eagerly anticipating the revelation of the sons of God. It can scarcely be a reference to believers, for they are distinguished from “the whole creation” (vv. 22–23), nor to unbelievers, for they are not looking for the revelation of the sons of God. This makes it probable that Paul means the whole of subpersonal creation.⁸⁷ He personifies it and pictures it as looking for the consummation of all things (which should not surprise us too much; the Old Testament also contains passages which speak of nature as rejoicing, such as Ps. 96:12; 98:8; Isa. 35:1; 55:12). Paul uses two unusual double compounds (NIV, waits and eager expectation) which together give a vivid picture of the hushed expectancy with which the whole creation awaits the disclosure of the coming glory. Creation waits for⁸⁸ “the revelation⁸⁹ of the sons of God.” Sonship to God is a reality. There is such a thing as membership in the heavenly family, even though creation as a whole does not know the sons as such. Paul is saying that in due time all will be made plain.

20. The third For in as many verses (this time translated in NIV) carries the argument on in logical sequence. We know that the creation waits for the revelation because it has been subjected to frustration (or “futility”, NASB).⁹⁰ Of itself and without any thought of divine purpose the whole creation is futile. Paul is saying that sin, which affected the divine purpose in man, affected also the entire nonhuman creation. Lacking the purpose for which it was designed, it has no purpose. As Bruce puts it, “Man is part of ‘nature’, and the whole ‘nature’ of which he forms part was created good, has been involved in frustration and futility by sin, and will ultimately be redeemed.” The creation, Paul says, was subjected to this futility, and that not by its own choice. The aorist tense of the verb looks to a single occasion, which is not likely to be creation. Rather it is the fall, which Paul sees as cosmic in its effects. This subjection was not by creation’s own choice but by the will of the one who subjected it.⁹¹ Who is it that subjected it? Most agree that Paul means God, but some see a reference to Adam (Robinson, O’Neill), whose act was responsible, to Satan, or to Adam or Satan (Godet). But Scripture never assigns to Adam or to Satan the power to bring about such a far-reaching change. We must think of God (cf. Gen. 3:17). And this accords with the note of hope on which the verse ends. There is no reason to think of Adam or of Satan acting in hope for the future of the race, but hope is characteristic of God, who may indeed be called “the God of hope” (15:13). The cosmic fall is not the last word; the last word is with hope.⁹²

There is an ambiguity about the end of this verse and the beginning of the next, brought about partly by the possibilities in punctuation and partly by the conjunction at the beginning of verse 21, which may be translated either “that” or “because”. Thus we may go along with NIV, in hope that (so Bruce, Lenski, etc.), or with RSV, “… subjected it in hope; because the creation…” (so Cranfield, Boylan, etc.). There is no convincing reason for preferring either understanding of the text.⁹³

21. If we take the conjunction to mean “because” (see the previous note), the logical sequence is maintained; otherwise the content of the hope is brought out. Itself puts some emphasis on creation, for Paul looks forward to a time when the total effect of sin will be done away and creation will stand forth in all its glory as God intends it to be. It will be set free from “the slavery of corruption”⁹⁴ which is so characteristic of the physical world: “Change and decay in all around I see”. But Paul does not regard this as permanent. Creation will in due course be freed from this bondage to decay. It will share to some extent in “the liberty of the glory of God’s children”. Many modern translations agree with NIV in rendering the glorious freedom, but this overlooks the fact that throughout this section the emphasis falls on the coming glory.⁹⁵ The creation will be liberated into the glory that then will be (for the coming glory of creation cf. Isa. 11:6; 32:15–16; 35:1–2, 6ff.; Col. 1:20; 2 Pet. 3:13; Rev. 21, 22).⁹⁶

22. Once again with We know (see the note on 2:2) Paul appeals to knowledge accepted among Christians, and again he carries on his logical sequence with “for” (which again NIV omits). What is a matter of common knowledge among believers here is that creation is in trouble. The whole creation is involved; Paul is not referring to some tiny segment, though “Not only so” at the beginning of the next verse shows that believers are not included. Paul uses the words “groans together and travails together”,⁹⁷ a vivid expression for the troubled state of nature (cf. Moffatt, “the entire creation sighs and throbs with pain”). But Paul sees not only an expression of pain, but of meaningful pain like the pain of childbirth. Creation is not undergoing death pangs, but, as Calvin pointed out, birth pangs. Some remind us of the Jewish idea of “the birth pangs of Messiah” and suggest that Paul is referring to pain as the precursor of the coming again of Christ. This is probably too specific. Paul’s thought is rather that God will produce something completely new (“the freedom of the glory of the children of God”), not that what happens will be an inevitable outcome of the world’s troubles. Right up to the present time brings this right up to date. The world’s anguish is a continuing phenomenon.

23. “And that is not all!”⁹⁸ Paul proceeds to add believers to the creation that is groaning, and indeed he puts strong emphasis on “we ourselves”.⁹⁹ We Christians have wonderful privileges, but we groan too. Perhaps Paul’s thought is that we groan partly because of those privileges, for they enable us to understand that there must be something much better than we now see, and we long for it to come. So he speaks of having the firstfruits of the Spirit. The firstfruits refers to the Jewish custom of bringing the first of the harvest to the temple and offering it to God (Lev. 23:10–11). This consecrated the whole harvest, and it carries with it the thought that there will be later fruits (otherwise there is no point in “first”). The concept is mainly Pauline in the New Testament.¹⁰⁰ Whereas in the Old Testament the word normally refers to what we give to God, Paul usually has it for what God gives to us, with the thought that more is in store. Paul is saying here either that the measure of the Holy Spirit that we now have is but a foretaste of the greater measure there will be in the age to come, or that the gift of the Spirit now is a foretaste of the many other blessings we will have in due course.¹⁰¹ Interestingly, when he is talking about the resurrection Paul says that Christ is the firstfruits (1 Cor. 15:20), but now, from another point of view, he says that the Spirit is the firstfruits. The same term may be used of God’s pledge to us that we will rise from the dead, and also that we will receive abundant blessings after we rise. Paul uses the participle “having”, and this may be understood either in the sense “though we have the Spirit we groan” (as Gifford) or “because we have the Spirit we groan” (Denney). Both are true, and there is no way of deciding between them.

Paul emphasizes that we Christians are caught up in the groaning that is characteristic of all creation. Groan expresses something of our deep¹⁰² sorrow at the circumstances in which we find ourselves (cf. 2 Cor. 5:2–4) as we wait eagerly (the same emphatic compound as in v. 19, where see note) for our adoption. Paul has spoken of believers as having already received “the Spirit of sonship” (v. 15). It would be a quibble to say that that does not mean our adoption (but only the Spirit who brings about adoption). The reconciliation with what Paul is saying here is that there is more to adoption into the heavenly family than we now experience. What we have now is real, but it is not the whole (cf. 1 John 3:2), and our foretaste leads us to look forward with eager longing to the completion of what God has already begun in us (cf. v. 19).

Paul speaks of this future blessing as the redemption of our bodies.¹⁰³ Redemption (cf. 3:24) is used of the process whereby the sinner is purchased for freedom, purchased to be God’s own. It is not generally used in the New Testament of what is physical, and its use here of the body shows that in the process of salvation the values of the body are not overlooked. This does not mean that the body will be resurrected to continue in its present state (see 1 Cor. 15). Rather, it will be what Paul there calls “a spiritual body” (1 Cor. 15:44; cf. v. 51; Phil. 3:21). The apostle is sure that bodily values will not be lost. In the end there will be not the survival of the immortal soul but the resurrection of the body.

24. “For in hope were we saved”, Paul says, linking this to the preceding as the reason for it. There has been a good deal of discussion of the expression rendered “in hope”.¹⁰⁴ The problem is the significance of the dative. KJV rendered it “by hope” (so Phillips, Barclay, etc.). But it is Paul’s habit to speak of being saved “by faith”, and hope certainly does not have the same place as does faith, though the two are closely connected.¹⁰⁵ It is better to render “in hope” (with RSV, NEB, etc.). There is little to be said for “for hope” (SH note this among some German writers; cf. O’Neill). Paul says “we were saved”, not, as JB puts it, “we must be content to hope that we shall be saved” (that is a misunderstanding of what Paul is saying). Salvation is often seen in the New Testament as future (5:9), and sometimes as present (1 Cor. 1:18). But it is also past. It was effected by Christ’s death in the past, and our appropriation of that death by faith is also past. So the aorist tense brings out an aspect of salvation which the other tenses do not. But while Paul is appreciating what we have already experienced, he recognizes that there is more, and thus he speaks of our having been saved “in hope”. We look forward in hope to the full realization of what Christ has done for us. Paul goes on to bring out something of the meaning of hope by telling us what it is not: hope that is seen is no hope at all. The word “hope” may be used for the thing hoped for as well as for hope itself (cf. Col. 1:5; Heb. 6:18), and there is some of that meaning here. Why should anyone hope for what is a present reality? The very existence of Christian hope shows that the full extent and the full riches of the Christian salvation have yet to appear.¹⁰⁶

25. Now Paul sets forth the opposite position. If we hope for what we do not yet have, the case is different. This is not really an exact complement to the preceding, but the meaning is plain enough. If we do not yet see something we very much want, then hoping for it is a meaningful expression. Characteristically Paul does not leave it at that. He could have said that if we hope in this way, “then we have real hope” or something like that. Instead he says, we wait for it patiently, though NIV’s patiently may not be the best way of putting it, despite the fact that several translations have something like this. But Paul’s word¹⁰⁷ denotes not so much a quiet acceptance as a positive endurance (cf. NASB, “perseverance”). It is the attitude of the soldier who in the thick of the battle is not dismayed but fights on stoutly whatever the difficulties. And once again he uses the rare double compound for wait (earlier in vv. 19 and 23), a word which combines the thoughts of eagerness and endurance. W. Grundmann considers Paul’s use of this word as distinctive, and here “In virtue of the reception of the Spirit the Christian attitude is one of burning expectation in conformity with the divine plans”.¹⁰⁸

4. The Spirit’s Intercession, 8:26–27

²⁶In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what^a we ought to pray, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express. ²⁷And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints in accordance with God’s will.

Believers ought not to be unduly perturbed by the difficulties of life. Paul has pointed out that the frustrations and futility inherent in this life are not proof against the Christian hope. He now goes on to add to that. Just as the Spirit is with us as the firstfruits while we await the consummation (v. 23), so he is with us in the difficult business of prayer. It is easy to become discouraged in our praying, for we are conscious that we do it so badly. But here, too, we are not left to our own devices. The Spirit intercedes for us.

26. In the same way links this to the foregoing. Believers are helped in their earthly troubles (in which they “groan inwardly”, v. 23). Likewise¹⁰⁹ they are helped in their weakness, specifically in their weakness in prayer. Perhaps we should see a reference also to the hope of which Paul has just been speaking. The Spirit’s help preserves and enlarges the hope in which we live. The Spirit helps us, says Paul, using a most uncommon verb.¹¹⁰ His us shows that he does not set himself on some pedestal, as though his prayers were not subject to the limitations he finds in those of the Romans. He, too, needs the Spirit’s help. We should notice further that Paul does not say that the Spirit removes our weakness; it is still there, and we live our whole life in conditions of weakness. What the Spirit does is to help; he gives us the aid we need to see us through. Weakness is not sin, nor is it suffering (though the sufferings of which he has been speaking will not be out of mind). Paul is simply referring to the fact that we who are Christians are not the spiritual giants we would like to be (and sometimes imagine we are). We are weak, and left to ourselves we will always be in trouble. The later MSS often have the plural (cf. KJV, “our infirmities”), but Paul is referring to the overall weakness of human nature rather than to particular manifestations of that weakness.

One such manifestation is our ignorance about prayer.¹¹¹ We do not know what we ought to pray is often taken to mean that we do not know how to pray (NEB, Moffatt). That is true, but it does not seem to be what Paul is saying.¹¹² He is rather referring to the words we use (so NIV), and perhaps the objects for which we pray (cf. NEB mg., “what it is right to pray for”). There is nothing in the Greek to correspond to “for”, but “what we should pray” is surely broad enough to include the object. The two go together. It is not only that we do not pray very well;¹¹³ it is also the case that, while we often think we know what we need, we are not always good judges of that either. Thus Paul tells us that three times he asked God to take away his “thorn in the flesh”, only to be told that God’s strength “is made perfect in weakness” (2 Cor. 12:7–9). Or we might think of Moses’ prayer to enter the Promised Land (Deut. 3:25–26), or Jeremiah’s for the Jews (Jer. 15:1). So difficult is it to know what it is best to pray for that some of the heathen philosophers advised their followers not to pray at all! Our horizon is always limited, and we do not know what is best. As Knox puts it, “our needs go far beyond the power of our speech to express them”; he goes on to point out that it is only as the Holy Spirit is at work within us that we can cry, “Abba, Father” (v. 15).

But we cannot hide behind a plea of ignorance and give up prayer. Prayer is part of the Christian life. Paul’s expression is somewhat stronger than NIV’s what we ought to pray¹¹⁴ and points to what is absolutely necessary. We must pray aright, and since we cannot do that, the Spirit comes to our aid (cf. Eph. 2:18 for access to the Father in (or by) the Spirit; Lagrange draws attention also to Matt. 10:20).¹¹⁵ He himself (the pronoun puts some emphasis on the fact that it is the Spirit, he and none else) intercedes¹¹⁶ for us. Christ prays for us (v. 34; Heb. 7:25; 1 John 2:1), but it has been said that his prayer is concerned with atonement whereas that of the Spirit is concerned with “sanctifying and perfecting” (Olshausen). Christ’s intercession is in heaven (Heb. 7:25–26; 9:24), whereas that of the Holy Spirit is within believers.

The Spirit’s intercession is with groans that words cannot express. There is some discussion about the latter part of this saying, and some hold that “unspoken” is a better understanding than “inexpressible”.¹¹⁷ The word is found here only in the New Testament, so there are no other passages with which to compare this one. Both possibilities must be kept open, though “inexpressible” does seem more likely. A second difficult question is whether the groans are those of the believer or not. Phillips translates, “His Spirit within us is actually praying for us in those agonising longings which never find words”, and NEB, “through our inarticulate groans”, while O’Neill regards the passage as “a defence of inarticulate prayer in Christian worship”. This is understood in the sense that the Spirit produces these groanings within us; Paul is not describing what happens to the natural man. But others insist that the groans are metaphorical. They point out that the believer is not said to groan and hold that Paul is speaking of an activity of the Spirit only. They also notice that creation is said to groan (v. 22) without this meaning a literally audible sound. So here they understand a figurative way of referring to an activity of the Spirit. Thus George W. MacRae says, “The ‘groans’ of the Spirit are of course likewise metaphorical; they do not imply any kind of human prayer.”¹¹⁸ Such a view is taken up by Hendriksen, TH, and others. There is no way of deciding the question with finality, but perhaps there is a little more to be said for the view that the groans are uttered by the believer. The Spirit is not said to groan, but to intercede “with” or “in” groans, and these may well be those of the believer. Paul seems to be saying that when we cannot find words in which to express our prayer and can do no better than make inarticulate sounds, the Spirit takes those sounds and makes them into effective intercession.^118a It is an encouragement to all of us who find praying difficult. The natural man does not groan over his weakness in prayer. Believers do, and this groaning is the work of the Spirit in them.

Some exegetes regard this as a form of praying in “tongues”. Thus Käsemann thinks it makes good sense if “what is at issue is the praying in tongues of 1 Cor 14:15” (p. 241).¹¹⁹ But there seems little reason to hold such a view. Charismatic praying may well be included, but Paul’s words are wide enough to cover “all praying of Christian men” (Cranfield). Are we to say that only the charismatics have the Spirit’s help? A better position is that of Leenhardt: “These ‘sighs’ are a form of the ‘sigh’ of creation. Hence they cannot be assimilated to glossolaly. Moreover Paul is speaking here of the prayer of every Christian, whereas glossolaly is a special charismatic gift.” Charismatic prayer is usually seen as a form of praise, whereas Paul seems here to be referring to intercession.¹²⁰

27. And¹²¹ he who searches our hearts is not named, but God is the only one who can be thus described (cf. Ps. 7:9; Prov. 17:3; Acts 1:24; 1 Thess. 2:4; Christ, Rev. 2:23).¹²² He is now said to know the mind of the Spirit. Since God knows the hearts he certainly knows what the Spirit is doing in those hearts; thus some take the reference to be to the human spirit (e.g., Olshausen). The identical expression is found in verse 6, where it refers to the general bent of thought and motive set on the Spirit. If it has the same meaning here, the thought will be that the all-knowing Spirit (cf. 1 Cor. 2:10) knows who are spiritually minded, for he makes intercession on behalf of saints. But it is generally agreed that it makes much better sense here to see a reference to the Holy Spirit. God knows the Holy Spirit’s mind and thus takes full account of the Spirit’s intercession for saints. Perhaps we should say that as God searches the hearts he finds the “unutterable groanings” which are the intercession of the Spirit. He knows the Spirit’s mind, and the implication is that he answers the prayers so offered.

There is some dispute as to whether we should introduce the second part of the sentence with because (as NIV) or “that” (as JB). The Greek could mean either.¹²³ If we take it to mean “because”, Paul is telling us why it is that God knows the Spirit’s mind; if “that”, he is giving us the content of the Spirit’s thought. Those who favor “because” maintain that Paul is clearly giving us the reason and further that “that” would tell us very little (“God knows that the Spirit intercedes”; how could it be otherwise?). Those who argue for “that” hold that the following is insufficient as a reason; God cannot be said to know the mind of the Spirit only because he intercedes. There seems no way of deciding the point, and both possibilities must be kept open.

The Spirit then intercedes¹²⁴ for the saints, and this intercession is in accordance with God’s will.¹²⁵ Saints lacks the article, the force of which will be that they are being prayed for because of their quality as “saints”, not because they belong to “the” saints as a group. Paul is giving encouragement to the humblest of God’s people. They may be dissatisfied with their praying, but they have a powerful intercessor and one who prays for them in accordance with the will of God himself.

5. The Purpose of God, 8:28–30

²⁸And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him,^a who have been called according to his purpose. ²⁹For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. ³⁰And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.

Paul turns to the way the purpose of God is worked out in believers. They may be depressed at the harsh conditions of their lives, but they should bear in mind that through it all God is working out a great purpose. No matter what the circumstances that purpose will not be overthrown, and it culminates in final glory.

28. There are different views about the opening of this verse.¹²⁶ Some favor “and”, seeing not a contrast with the preceding but a transition to a further thought of much the same kind (e.g., Murray). Others perceive a contrast between the groanings of the previous section and God’s working in this one (e.g., Godet). Either is possible, and many solve the problem by leaving out the connective (e.g., JB). A more important question is how we should take the words translated as in all things God works for the good…. Traditionally this has been taken as “all things work together for good” (as JB), but this has come under criticism (Dodd calls it “a serious mistranslation”). It is not difficult to cite sayings from the ancient world of the “In the end everything will turn out all right” type, and it is urged that Paul is not simply repeating a commonplace, and moreover one that leaves God out. Nor is it likely in the sense in which we find this thought in the Old Testament and Jewish writings (cf. Gen. 50:20; Eccl. 8:12; Sir. 39:24–27), in the first instance because they do not say what Paul is saying and in the second because of necessity they omit what Christ is doing and that is central in Paul’s present argument as it moves on to the way of salvation. Mere “things” do not work together (for good or ill). TH points out that no modern translation has this as its first choice (though it is a possible understanding of the Greek and is often put as an alternative). It has this going for it, that it is the most natural way of taking the Greek and is accepted by Barrett, Cranfield, Hendriksen, and others.¹²⁷

A few MSS read “God works all things….”¹²⁸ This gives an excellent sense and is accepted by RSV. But it is hard to understand why it is read by so few MSS if it is correct and involves us in a problem with the Greek construction.¹²⁹

Luther commented, “the Spirit makes all things, even though they are evil, work together for good”, and in recent times a number of scholars have taken up this view. They understand the “he” that is the subject of the verb “works together” to mean the Holy Spirit and take the sense of the passage to be, “He makes intercession for the saints according to the will of God and he makes all things work together….” This is an attractive solution and is adopted, for example, by NEB.¹³⁰ The principal objection to it is that, while the transition from verse 27 to 28 is easy, that from 28 to 29 is harsh and involves an unexpected change of subject. On the whole it seems best to take “he” as the subject and to understand the passage of the working of God in some such sense as “he that searches the hearts knows … he works all things for good … them he foreknew….”¹³¹ In any case it is certain that Paul is ascribing the working of everything for good not to some “evolutionary optimism” (Dodd) but to God, and that however we translate.

Paul does not explain what he means by the good, but we must clearly understand it in the sense “final good” or “true good”; it certainly does not mean in all the things we count for good, such as our pleasures. And it is good for “those who love God”, words which are in an emphatic position. Paul is not writing about the general public but about believers, here described in terms of their love for God. This is a most unusual way of referring to Christians;¹³² it is much more common to find references to God’s love for them. But there are many exhortations to believers to love, usually to love one another, but sometimes to love God (Matt. 22:37). Paul speaks of believers loving God in a couple of other places (1 Cor. 2:9; 8:3; cf. Eph. 6:24). It is a very impressive way of characterizing them; love is central in the life of the Christian.

Those who love God are also those who¹³³ have been called according to his purpose. For called see on 1:1; the idea of the divine call is very important for Paul. In the Gospels we sometimes read “many are called, but few chosen”, but Paul is not using the term “call” in that sense. He means “effectual call”; he is speaking of those who have not only heard the call but have responded. He goes on to link this with God’s purpose, which means God’s saving purpose. It is that purpose which we see in the sending of Jesus, in his life, death, resurrection, and ascension, and in the preaching of the gospel whereby people are brought out of their darkness into God’s marvellous light.¹³⁴

29. For¹³⁵ links this closely to the preceding. NIV has introduced the word God to make the passage plain, but Paul simply says “those he foreknew”. The verb¹³⁶ means “know beforehand” and is the first of a series of five verbs outlining what God has done in fulfilment of his saving purpose. Many scholars feel that we cannot take the verb in this place to refer to no more than knowledge. They point out that in the Old Testament the equivalent means something like “choose in advance” (as in Jer. 1:5; Amos 3:2). This must surely be borne in mind, but we must also remember that Paul’s next verb is predestined and we must be on our guard against making the two say the same thing.¹³⁷ Moreover, Paul is describing the saved, and God’s foreknowledge of them is not the same as his foreknowledge of all mankind. Perhaps “chose beforehand” is as good as we can do, viewing this as a reference to election.

Paul goes on to predestination.¹³⁸ This is an important New Testament concept and one which some people find difficult because they are so sure that we have free wills. This is not the place to go into a discussion of the relative places of the two; it must suffice to notice that the meaning of the word is plain. We must not allow ourselves to be sidetracked by modern notions of what is or is not possible for God. Paul is saying that God is the author of our salvation, and that from beginning to end. We are not to think that God can take action only when we graciously give him permission. Paul is saying that God initiates the whole process. As Barrett puts it: “The history and personal make-up of the Church are not due to chance or to arbitrary human choices, but represent the working out of God’s plan…. Our own intentions, like our own virtues, are far too insecure to stand the tests of time and judgement.” He sees it as “the most comfortable of all Christian doctrines, if men will accept it in its biblical form, and not attempt to pry into it with questions which it does not set out to answer. It is … the final statement of the truth that justification, and, in the end, salvation also, are by grace alone, and through faith alone.”

God predestined his people to be conformed¹³⁹ to the likeness¹⁴⁰ of his Son. We are to become like Christ (cf. 1 John 3:1), which, as Hendriksen points out, means sanctification. It is God’s plan that his people become like his Son, not that they should muddle along in a modest respectability. We should be in no doubt as to the high standard that Paul sets for Christian people. We have been admitted to the heavenly family; we are brothers in that family and we call God “Father”. We are accordingly to live as members of the family, and that means being made like our elder Brother. This is all part of God’s predestination; he predestined us not only to be released from an unpleasant predicament, but in order that we might become like his Son.

This is further explained: that he might be the firstborn among many brothers.¹⁴¹ The firstborn is, of course, the most important of the children. He is the heir and the one singled out for special honor.¹⁴² But firstborn implies “later born”; the term points to others who will in due course be members of the family. Paul is saying that it was always in God’s plan that there might be many in his family, children who look to Christ as the firstborn and rejoice that they are children of the same Father (cf. v. 17).¹⁴³

30. The sequence is resumed. Those he predestined God also called (again the call is an effectual call, for it is preceded by predestination). Those he called God also justified (see Additional Note D). This is an important concept for Paul and receives special emphasis in this epistle. It leads on to glorification, for those whom God justified he also glorified. The aorist tense here is unexpected (though Paul sometimes speaks of a present glory; e.g., 2 Cor. 3:18; 4:11). Some think the verb has been attracted into the tense of the other verbs in the sequence, but it is more likely that it is used of set purpose to bring out the truth that our glorification is certain. So certain is it that it can be spoken of as already accomplished. It is in the plan of God, and that means that it is as good as here. It is “certain in the Divine counsels. To God there is neither ‘before nor after’ ” (SH).¹⁴⁴

6. The Christian’s Triumph Song, 8:31–39

³¹What, then, shall we say in response to this? If God is for us, who can be against us? ³²He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? ³³Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. ³⁴Who is he that condemns? Christ Jesus, who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. ³⁵Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? ³⁶As it is written:

“For your sake we face death all day long;

we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.”^a

³⁷No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. ³⁸For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons,^b neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, ³⁹neither 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.

Paul rounds off the first half of his letter with a passage which Christians have always regarded as one of the most wonderful parts of a wonderful epistle. There have been widely differing estimates of the literary form of this section, and, for example, Dodd regards it as “Paul’s poetry” while Käsemann maintains that “The style of the whole is thoroughly prosaic” (p. 247). I prefer to go along with Wilckens, who sees it as the Christian’s “triumph song”. Some think there is a careful division into subsections, others that it is a fine rhapsody, paying little attention to the sequence of thought. Be that as it may, it will suffice to notice that in the first half Paul is concerned with the impossibility of any charge against the believer being sustained before God (vv. 31–34), and in the second with the impossibility of anything separating us from God’s love (vv. 35–39). The whole should be seen as the conclusion and summing up not of the immediately preceding section, but of the whole of the letter up to this point.

31. Paul’s “therefore”¹⁴⁵ introduces the following paragraph as a logical inference from what he has been saying; this will refer to the whole letter, not just verses 29–30. For “What shall we say?”, so characteristic of this letter and so rare elsewhere, see the note on 3:5. The argument proceeds with a series of rhetorical questions, the first being Paul’s characteristic appeal to what the reader’s response will be.¹⁴⁶ The second is introduced with an “If” which implies no doubt about what follows: it signifies “If (as is the case)….” We must bear in mind that it is dangerous to say confidently God is for us, as religious fanatics have shown all too plainly through the centuries in their perpetration of innumerable horrors out of an arrogant conviction that they are completely right and others are completely wrong. But it is dangerous also to avoid it. Paul has been writing about a God who, in order to bring salvation to sinners, works all things for good, foreknows them, predestines them, calls them, justifies them, and glorifies them. It would be wrong to say anything less than that that God is “for” the sinners who are the objects of such love. When Paul goes on to ask, who can be against us? he does not mean that the Christian has no opponents. His entire correspondence is eloquent of the foes the Christian encounters constantly. He means that with God “for us” it makes not the slightest particle of difference who is against us. No foe can prevail against people who are supported by a God like that. The Christian’s confidence is in God, not in anything he himself does, and for all eternity he can rely on God’s gift. Paul is not speaking out of grim desperation, but in “joyous elation” (BDF 496[2]).

32. Paul’s third rhetorical question directs attention to God’s gift of his Son for us.¹⁴⁷ God did not spare his own Son, where the language is reminiscent of that used of Abraham’s readiness to sacrifice Isaac (Gen. 22:16).¹⁴⁸ But Abraham was praised only for his readiness to sacrifice Isaac, for in fact the boy was not offered. God, however, did not spare his own Son, where own points to a special relationship.¹⁴⁹ Rather, he gave him up for us all, the supreme act of love.¹⁵⁰ For us indicates that he stood in our place,¹⁵¹ while us all adds a touch of completeness; none is missed. This is not universalism, for us means “us Christians”, “us of whom we have been speaking”.

The rhetorical question brings out the certainty that God will continue his blessings for the redeemed. He has done the greater thing in giving up his Son; how can he not now do the less?¹⁵² The gift is given along with him; in other words, it is to be understood in terms of our union with the crucified Christ (v. 17; so Wilckens, Michel). The gift is graciously given, where the verb stresses the freeness of the giving.¹⁵³ When God gives, both to his Son and to his sons, he does so with no grudging hand. Indeed, Paul speaks of our being given all things! This may be understood in terms of our being “co-heirs with Christ” (v. 17), or perhaps better in the sense “all things connected with salvation”.

33. There is a punctuation problem arising from the fact that there were practically no punctuation marks in antiquity. All are agreed that Paul is asking some rhetorical questions, but how many? NIV has a question followed by a statement in this verse and the next, but some prefer to see questions throughout (e.g., Barrett, Moffatt). However, it would be strange to have such a long series of questions without an answer anywhere, and we should accept the position of NIV. The passage is reminiscent of Isaiah 50:8–9, and the alternation of question and answer there may favor a similar construction here. Paul first asks, Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? where the language is that of the law court.¹⁵⁴ Those whom God has chosen is more exactly “God’s elect”. This, as Black points out, is “an old name for Israel (1 Chr. 16:13; Ps. 105:6, 43), but specially used in the later apocalypses and inter-Testamental writings for the ‘Elect Israel’, or ‘Remnant’, and its members”. Paul uses the expression rarely, despite his insistence on God’s electing activity (only in Col. 3:12; Tit. 3:5; but cf. 16:13). He may have been deterred by the use to which it was put in contemporary Judaism.¹⁵⁵ He does not have the definite article with “elect”, which indicates that he is thinking not so much of “the” elect as a class as of people whose characteristic is to be elect. The emphasis is on the quality. When he asks who will bring a charge against such people, he does not imply that no one will do this. The very name “Satan” means “accuser” (cf. Zech. 3:1), and there has never been a shortage of enemies to make accusations against God’s people. He means that no accusation will stand for a moment, for it is none less than God¹⁵⁶ who justifies.¹⁵⁷ God will surely justify his own. The believer might well be concerned about his sins and wonder whether in the end they might prevail against him. Paul is sure that they will not. Since it is God who justifies, the believer’s justification can never be overthrown.¹⁵⁸

34. Who is he that condemns?¹⁵⁹ The immediate reference to Christ may in part at least arise from the fact that at the last great day it is Christ who is to be the judge and who will condemn those who are to be condemned (2 Cor. 5:10). If he then is for us, how can we possibly be condemned? Our heart may condemn us (1 John 3:20–21), but it is Christ, not our heart, that matters in the final resort. The impossibility of condemnation is shown by the fact that it is Christ who died. His death removes the possibility of condemnation for those who are in him. More than that introduces a preferable statement. The death is important, and indeed central. But it does not stand on its own, and Paul proceeds to the thought that Christ was raised. It is usual in the New Testament to ascribe the resurrection to the Father, and the passive agrees with this.¹⁶⁰ Christ is at the right hand¹⁶¹of God, an important part of New Testament teaching (Acts 2:33; 5:31; 7:55–56; Eph. 1:20; Col. 3:1; Heb. 1:3; 8:1; 10:12; 12:2; 1 Pet. 3:22). It means that he is in the place of highest honor in heaven. The posture of sitting (Eph. 1:20; Col. 3:1; Heb. 1:3, etc.) signifies “the finished work of Christ”, as the older theologians delighted to put it. This means that we should take is also interceding for us with some care (cf. Heb. 7:25; 1 John 2:1). We should interpret the intercession passages in the light of frequent references to sitting at the right hand of God. His presence at God’s right hand in his capacity as the one who died for sinners and rose again is itself an intercession.¹⁶² Barclay makes another point regarding the intercession. He states that “the earliest creed of the Church” makes four points: Christ died, he rose, he is at the right hand of God, and he will come again to judge the living and the dead. Paul has the first three, but he thinks of Christ’s intercession rather than of judgment. Both are true, but it is interesting to note Paul’s emphasis.

35. Who shall separate¹⁶³ us from the love of Christ? continues the rhetorical questions. It is of interest that Paul says who rather than “what”, especially when we look at the candidates he lists. But perhaps this is no more than a recognition of the fact that the nouns he lists are all masculine or feminine; there are no neuters. Cranfield notes that there is a slight emphasis on us from its position in the Greek; us for whom Christ died. The love of Christ might mean “our love for Christ” or “Christ’s love for us”, depending on whether we see the genitive as subjective or objective. But it is generally agreed that it is Christ’s love of which Paul writes.¹⁶⁴ To say that we will never be separated from our love for Christ gives us no great confidence (we know ourselves only too well!). But it is a wonderful assurance that Christ’s love for us will always be there. It is perhaps a little surprising that Paul speaks of the love of Christ rather than the love of God (cf. 5:5). But there is not much difference between the two (cf. v. 39), and the apostle has just been referring to Christ’s death for us.

This launches him on to a rhetorical passage in which he suggests a number of possible candidates. Trouble¹⁶⁵ is a word for strong pressure; it is a general term and does not define the nature of the pressure. Hardship¹⁶⁶ is also a general word, though Hendriksen holds that the combination of the two words means outward affliction plus inward distress. Persecution brings before us an ever-present possibility for the early church. Famine (the word may mean no more than “hunger”) reminds us of the precariousness of food supplies in the world in which Paul’s readers lived. Earle has a good comment on nakedness: “This term today suggests indecency on parade. Then it meant a lack of clothes simply because one had no ways or means of getting any” (cf. Goodspeed, “destitution”). Danger¹⁶⁷ reminds us of the many risks the early Christians ran; it was not a comfortable world in which to profess the faith. Sword, of course, means execution; it is the only item in the list that Paul had not undergone, and in due time he would experience this also.¹⁶⁸

36. A quotation from Psalm 44:22 (cf. 2 Cor. 4:11) reinforces what Paul has been saying in the last few words rather than in the thought of the all-embracing reach of the love of Christ. The words in the original psalm express the perplexity of the people of God in the face of inexplicable suffering. But Paul cites them to bring out the truth that for God’s people there is real risk and a call for real devotion. Christians might be tempted to think that because the love of Christ is so real and so unshakable they need not fear that they will run into trouble. Scripture shows that, while the love is sure, so are troubles. For the sake of God we face death all day long. Actually Paul says something stronger than this: “We are being killed all day long”. It is real and not imaginary peril that Christians face. We are considered is an aorist, which is somewhat unexpected. Probably we should see it as pointing to an accomplished fact. As¹⁶⁹ sheep to be slaughtered¹⁷⁰ points to the very real risks believers ran. Barrett comments, “Suffering and persecution are not mere evils which Christians must expect and endure as best they can; they are the scene of the overwhelming victory which Christians are winning through Christ.”

37. Paul begins with “But”,¹⁷¹ introducing something contrary to all that might have been expected and which NIV renders with No (as do KJV, RSV, Phillips, Moffatt, etc.). In all these things shows that Paul is overlooking nothing.¹⁷² We are more than conquerors is an inspired piece of translation which KJV took over from the Genevan version and which a number of modern translations retain. It emphasizes the totality of the victory that God gives his beloved.¹⁷³ The ability to triumph over all adversity does not arise from any inherent superiority of believers. It is through him who loved us, which may refer to the Father (Bengel) or to the Son (Shedd). Perhaps Paul is not distinguishing sharply between them. The tense of the verb is aorist, which is not quite what we expect of a love that goes on and on. It may be that Paul wants us to think of the love as focused on the cross; there we see what love really is (cf. Murray, Lenski, etc.).

38. Paul comes to the end of this eloquent section on a very personal note with his I am convinced.¹⁷⁴ The verb expresses certainty; Paul sees no possible shadow of doubt. And the perfect points to a permanent state. This is no passing whim. The apostle proceeds to make his point by listing potential candidates for separating us from God’s love. If none of these can effect a separation, then why should believers fear? They are assured that God will always keep them secure in his great love.¹⁷⁵

Paul has ten items in his list. The manuscripts vary a little, but he seems to arrange them in four pairs, along with two single items. The first pair is death and life. Death is an obvious antagonist, for people have always feared it. It is so certain and so final. It is obvious that no one can escape it, and it is easy to be scared of what lies on the other side. “God is there in all his love”, Paul is reasoning. He could say “I die daily” (1 Cor. 15:31). He could say “to die is gain”, and he looked forward to dying and being with Christ (Phil. 1:21, 23). For him death might be a grim tyrant, but there is no reason why the believer should fear it. We may be puzzled at life occurring in this list, but it forms a natural opposite to death and it is true that, just as many fear death, so many are afraid of life. Life has persecutions and trials on the one hand and it has tranquillity and pleasures on the other, and any of these could be the means of seducing us from the path of service. But nothing in life can stop God from loving us.

So it is with angels and demons. We may be surprised to find angels in such a list, but good angels seem to have been the objects of worship in some circles (Col. 2:18; cf. Rev. 22:8–9) and thus might conceivably be obstacles in the way of the believer. Perhaps we should bear in mind also that the word “angel” means “messenger” and, though in the New Testament this normally means a messenger from God, occasionally it may be an evil being (cf. Rev. 12:7). It is also possible that angels are here thought of as serving spirits over against spirits who rule (cf. BAGD). The word NIV renders demons¹⁷⁶ refers to rulers, sometimes earthly and sometimes in the spiritual realm. It is the word KJV, RSV, and others render “principalities”. The problem here is that it might denote either heavenly beings or earthly rulers. NIV uses it for the realm of spirits, whereas Phillips translates “neither messenger of heaven nor monarch of earth”. Paul may have had earthly monarchs or demons exclusively in mind, but if so we have no way of knowing which. But we can be sure that he could not imagine any ruler in heaven or earth, of good character or bad, hindering the outreach of the love of God.

He moves on to the present and the future. Harrison well remarks that time is powerless against believers, “whether it be the present with its temptations and sufferings or the future with its uncertainties.” This may be what Paul had in mind, or he may be thinking of what is involved in the two ages, this present age and the age to come. But whatever time brings, the love of God triumphs. It is not quite clear what he means when he goes on to powers.¹⁷⁷ The word is often used for “mighty works” or “miracles”, and such a meaning is possible here. No powerful magician can interfere with God’s love. But the word is also used of heavenly “powers” (Eph. 1:21; 1 Pet. 3:22), and it seems probable that this is what Paul has in mind, though it is not easy to know precisely what such a being could be apart from angels and authorities.¹⁷⁸ But perhaps in such a lyrical passage as this we should not push our distinctions too hard. Paul is saying that no angelic power of any sort can separate from God.

39. Neither height nor depth may negate the immensity of the physical universe. We can feel very small in such a vast environment, and Paul may well be assuring us that God’s love is greater still (cf. Ps. 139:8). But the terms were often used in astrology, and many scholars see some such reference here.¹⁷⁹ GNB retains something of the ambiguity with “neither the world above nor the world below”. If the terms are being used with an astrological reference, Paul will be saying that neither the height (when a star is at its zenith) nor the depth (with all its unknown potential) is strong enough to separate from God’s love.

With anything else in all creation Paul abandons specifics and settles for a sweeping generalization wide enough to cover everything else that exists.¹⁸⁰ He does not say “will separate” but will be able to separate; he is talking about power, and no created being is powerful alongside the Creator. The love of God is, of course, God’s love for us and not ours for him. And this love is explained as in Christ Jesus our Lord.¹⁸¹ We cannot know the love of God apart from Christ. The cross, and only the cross, shows what real, divine love is (cf. 5:8).¹⁸²

↑ Back to top