3. The triumph of faith (8:31–39)
C. Freedom from death (8:1–39)
1. Life in the Spirit (8:1–17)
‘Walk by the Spirit,’ Paul had said to the Galatians, ‘and you will by no means fulfil the desire of the flesh’ (Gal. 5:16).22 Here he expands those words. The Holy Spirit has not been mentioned in chapter 7, but he pervades chapter 8, which describes the life of victory and hope lived by those who ‘are in Christ Jesus’ (verse 1) and ‘walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit’ (verse 4).
So long as they endeavour to rely on their own resources, they fight a losing battle; when they avail themselves of the resources of life and power that are theirs ‘in Christ Jesus’, they are more than conquerors. There is therefore no reason why they should go on in a life of penal servitude, bound to carry out the dictates of the tyrannical law of sin and death. Christ dwells in them by his Spirit, and his Spirit infuses into them a new principle—the law of life—which is stronger than indwelling sin and sets them free from its tyranny.
Under the old order, before the coming of the Spirit, it was impossible to do the will of God, and if people’s lives are still dominated by that old order, to do his will remains an impossibility. But those who belong to the new order of the Spirit do the will of God from the heart. Their own spirit, formerly dead and insensitive, is now instinct with the life which the Spirit of God imparts. Their body may still for the time being be subject to the law of death which results from the entry of sin into the world; but the last word remains with the Spirit of life.
For not only does the Spirit maintain life and power in the spirit of believers here and now; his indwelling presence is a token that their body, still subject to mortality, will rise to new life as Christ’s own body rose. The body is not excluded from the benefits of ‘the redemption which is in Christ Jesus’. Paul has already used this fact in an appeal to members of the Corinthian church to regard their bodies and bodily actions in a spirit of Christian responsibility: ‘you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body’ (1 Cor. 6:20). Here he suggests that intimations of a coming immortality are conveyed by the Spirit even in this period of mortality: this is one of the many ways in which the presence of the Spirit in this phase of existence is the first-fruits of a heritage of glory yet to be realized. If those who go on in conformity with the old order have the sentence of death within themselves, those who reckon the old order as belonging to the dead past and follow the guidance of the Spirit of God have the assurance that life immortal has already begun within them. Indeed, the fact that they respond to the leading of the Spirit of God is a clear proof that they are children of God.
For Paul, the leading of the Spirit is not a matter of sporadic impulse, but the believer’s normal experience; it is the very principle of the freedom of the Christian life. ‘If you are led by the Spirit you are not under the law’ (Gal. 5:18). The old legal bondage has been thrown off; the Spirit introduces believers into a new relationship as God’s free-born sons and daughters. It is the prompting of the Spirit that causes them to address God spontaneously as their Father, using the expression which Jesus himself used when speaking to God as his Father—an expression proper to the intimate atmosphere of family affection. No wonder that, as Paul says elsewhere, the Spirit sent by God into his children’s hearts, crying ‘Abba! Father!’, is ‘the Spirit of his Son’ (Gal. 4:6). They have, in other words, received that Spirit who descended in power on Jesus at his baptism (Mark 1:10), led him in the wilderness (Luke 4:1–2), supplied the energy for his mighty works (Matt. 12:28) and animated his whole life and ministry (Luke 4:14, 18).
Thus the Spirit of God bears consentient witness with the personal spirit of Christians that they are children of God. God’s children, moreover, are his heirs—heirs to that glory which is Christ’s by unique right, and which by grace he shares with his people, who are thus joint-heirs with him. Those who in this present life experience the fellowship of his sufferings can look forward to the fellowship of his glory. ‘Suffering now, glory hereafter’ is a recurring New Testament theme, and one that corresponded to the realities of early Christian life. The warning given by Paul and Barnabas to their converts in South Galatia, that ‘through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God’ (Acts 14:22), was repeated as each new community was formed, and was speedily confirmed by experience. ‘If we endure, we shall also reign with him’ (2 Tim. 2:12) means the reproduction in the lives of Christians of the pattern perfectly exemplified in their Master, who by divine necessity passed through suffering, and so entered into his glory (cf. Luke 24:26; 1 Pet. 1:11; 5:1).
1. There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. If ‘condemnation’ were simply the converse of ‘justification’, Paul would be saying that those who are in Christ Jesus are justified; but that stage in the argument was reached in 3:21–4:25. The word katakrima here means ‘probably not “condemnation”, but the punishment following sentence’ (BAGD, p. 413)—in other words, penal servitude. There is no reason for those who are ‘in Christ Jesus’ to go on doing penal servitude as though they had never been pardoned, never been released from the prison-house of sin.
‘In Christ Jesus’ (or ‘in Christ’) is Paul’s description of the new order into which men and women are introduced when they put their trust in Christ. Christian baptism is baptism ‘into Christ Jesus’ (6:3); by faith-union with him his people are reckoned to have died with him, been buried with him and been raised with him. The common life in the body of Christ is Christ’s own resurrection life shared with his people; if from one point of view he lives in them, from another they live in him (cf. Gal. 2:20). ‘To be “in Christ” is to be a member of the church; not, of course, to have your name on the books, but to be in a real sense a limb or organ of Christ’s body, dependent upon Him, dedicated to His ends’ (cf. 12:4–5).23
2. The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set me free … Compare 2 Corinthians 3:17, ‘where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom’; also Galatians 5:13, ‘you were called to freedom.’ ‘Law’ here probably means ‘principle’ (see p. 59). It is the ‘law of the Spirit’ by contrast with ‘the law of sin which dwells in my members’ (7:23); it is the ‘law of life’ by contrast with the commandment which ‘promised life’ but ‘proved to be death’ (7:10).24 Even if the law of sin and death is not to be identified outright with the law of Moses, the law of Moses nevertheless stimulates sin and condemns to death. But the Spirit ‘by His determining influences produces regulated action without any code’.25
The mention of the Spirit here introduces a fuller exposition of his ministry, anticipated in 5:5, where his coming is said to flood the hearts of believers with the love of God, and 7:6, where ‘the new life of the Spirit’ is contrasted with ‘the old written code’ (cf. also the brief reference in 1:4 to the ‘Spirit of holiness’ in connection with Christ’s being raised from the dead). Paul now shows what is involved in the ‘new life’ which the Spirit imparts and sustains. With the entry of the Spirit there is no further talk of defeat. The conflict goes on, but where the Spirit is in control the power of indwelling sin is mastered.
For ‘me’ in ‘has set me free’ some weighty authorities (including the eastern witnesses Aleph and B and the western witness G), followed by the Nestle-Aland text, read ‘thee’ (cf. NEB: ‘has set you free’).
3. In the likeness of sinful flesh. Lit. ‘in likeness of flesh of sin’. ‘In likeness of flesh’ by itself would be docetic; it is of the essence of the gospel that the Son of God came ‘in flesh’ and not merely ‘in likeness of flesh’. Paul might have said simply ‘in flesh’, but he wished to emphasize that human flesh was the realm in which sin gained a foothold and usurped dominion until the grace of God drew near. Hence he says not simply ‘flesh’ but ‘flesh of sin’ or ‘sinful flesh’. But to say that the Son of God came ‘in sinful flesh’ might imply that there was sin in him, whereas (as Paul puts it elsewhere) he ‘knew no sin’ (2 Cor. 5:21). Hence he is described as being sent ‘in the likeness of sinful flesh’.
For sin. Greek peri hamartias, which is the regular LXX rendering of Hebrew ḥaṭṭā’t ‘sin-offering’. This is probably its force here (cf. RSV mg. ‘as a sin offering’;26 NEB ‘as a sacrifice for sin’).
Condemned sin in the flesh. Sentence was passed and executed on sin in Christ’s ‘flesh’, in his human nature, and thereby in human nature as such. ‘Paul wants to emphasize that the power of sin is a cosmic unity, but that it is broken into at one absolutely specific point’ (O. Michel, ad loc.). For those who are united to Christ, therefore, the power of sin has been broken (cf. 6:6–7).
4. In order that the just requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us. The law’s ‘just requirement’ is summed up in 13:9 in the single commandment, ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself.’ The Greek word is dikaiōma, used here as in 2:26 (for other meanings see p. 135, n. 26). Here is the fulfilment of Jeremiah’s prophecy of the new covenant (quoted in part in 11:27), under which, said God, ‘I will put my law within them, and I will write it upon their hearts’ (Jer. 31:33), and of the parallel promise of Ezekiel 11:19–20; 36:26–27, where God undertakes to give his people a ‘new heart’ and a ‘new spirit’—in fact, his own Spirit, sent to dwell within them so that they will henceforth do his will spontaneously. The New Testament writers recognize in the gospel the fulfilment of these and similar prophecies.
Who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. To live ‘according to the flesh’ means for Paul to live ‘under law’ (i.e. in the old aeon of bondage); to live ‘according to the Spirit’ means to live ‘under grace’ (i.e. in the new aeon of freedom); cf. 6:14.
Christian holiness is not a matter of painstaking conformity to the specific precepts of an external law-code; it is rather a question of the Holy Spirit’s producing his fruit in one’s life, reproducing those graces which were seen in perfection in the life of Christ. The law prescribed a life of holiness, but it was powerless to produce such a life, because of the inadequacy of the human material on which it had to work. But what the law was powerless to do has been done by God. Now that God’s own Son, sent to earth ‘in the likeness of sinful flesh’, has given up his life for the sin of the world, the death-sentence has been pronounced on sin. Sin found no foothold in the life of Jesus; it was effectively overcome in his death, and the fruits of that victory are now made good to all who are ‘in him’. All that the law required by way of conformity to the will of God is now realized in the lives of those who are controlled by the Holy Spirit and are released from their servitude to the old order. God’s commands have now become God’s enablings.
To run and work the law commands,
Yet gives me neither feet nor hands;
But better news the gospel brings:
It bids me fly, and gives me wings.
‘Grace was given’, as Augustine said, ‘that the law might be fulfilled.’27
Not until, by the death and resurrection of Christ, the new creation had come into being, did it become possible for God to send the Spirit of his Son into the hearts of lost and helpless men; and with the Spirit came life, freedom and power. Those who live by the Spirit, as Paul says, produce the fruits of the Spirit. A vine does not produce grapes by Act of Parliament; they are the fruit of the vine’s own life; so the conduct which conforms to the standard of the Kingdom is not produced by any demand, not even God’s, but it is the fruit of that divine nature which God gives as the result of what he has done in and by Christ.28
5. Those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. Cf. Galatians 5:16–17 (quoted on pp. 154, 159); also Galatians 5:25, ‘If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit.’
6. To set the mind on the flesh … to set the mind on the Spirit … Lit. ‘the mind of the flesh … the mind of the Spirit’. The two spheres of existence are so opposed that the one is described as death, the other as life. Compare the antithesis in Galatians 5:19–23 between ‘the works of the flesh’ and ‘the fruit of the Spirit’.
9. Any one who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. ‘If a man does not possess the Spirit of Christ, he is no Christian’ (NEB). Since it is the Spirit alone who brings people into living relation with Christ, there can be no such relation with Christ apart from the Spirit.
10. If Christ is in you, although your bodies are dead because of sin, your spirits are alive because of righteousness. Lit. ‘the body is dead … the spirit is life’. ‘The body is dead’ in the sense that it remains subject to death as the wages of sin: ‘dead’ is used as being more emphatic than ‘mortal’. The question further arises whether ‘the spirit’ is the believer’s human spirit or the indwelling Spirit of God. Thus far in chapter 8 pneuma has denoted the Spirit of God, and this raises a presumption that the word has the same meaning here. However, in verse 16 below it is used of the believer’s spirit (cf. 1:9, above). For Paul, the human spirit is not alive until it is quickened by the Spirit of God; hence if ‘the (human) spirit is alive’, it is because ‘the (divine) Spirit is life’. The ‘righteousness’ mentioned at the end of the verse is the righteousness of God received by faith (1:17; 3:22)—justification. Paul’s statement may be paraphrased: ‘If you are believers, the risen Christ dwells within you. It is true, on the one hand, that your body is still subject to that temporal death which is the consequence of sin; but, on the other hand, the Spirit who has taken up his abode in you, the living and life-giving Spirit of Christ, imparts to you that eternal life which is the consequence of justification’ (cf. 5:18, lit. ‘justification of life’).
Practically, be it noted, ‘if Christ is in you’ is equivalent to ‘if the Spirit of God really dwells in you’ (verse 9; cf. verse 11), even if the two may be distinguished theoretically. It is by the Spirit that the indwelling presence of the risen Christ is conveyed and maintained. Similarly, no practical distinction can be drawn between being ‘in Christ Jesus’ (verse 1) and ‘in the Spirit’ (verse 9).
11. He who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit which dwells in you. Even if for the present ‘the body is dead’ (verse 10), it too has the promise of life. Cf. 1 Corinthians 6:14; 2 Corinthians 4:14; 1 Thessalonians 4:14, where the resurrection of believers is similarly made dependent on the resurrection of Christ (cf. note on 1:4, p. 79). But here the role of the indwelling Spirit as the earnest of coming resurrection is emphasized as it is not in those earlier passages; cf., however, 2 Corinthians 5:5, ‘he who has prepared us for this very thing [the putting on of the heavenly body] is God, who has given us the Spirit as a guarantee.’
13. If by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body. ‘Put to death’ is equivalent to ‘consider … dead’ (6:11); whereas in 6:11 believers are exhorted to consider themselves dead in relation to sin, here they are told to treat their former sinful practices as dead in relation to themselves (so also in Col. 3:5). We may compare Galatians 5:24, ‘those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires’, and our Lord’s more vivid language about plucking out the eye or cutting off the hand or foot that leads one into sin (Mark 9:43–47).
14. All who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. Cf. Galatians 5:18, ‘if you are led by the Spirit you are not under the law.’ In Galatians 3:23–4:7 Paul contrasts the former bondage of slaves (‘under the law’) with the new freedom of sons (‘under grace’), into whose hearts ‘God has sent the Spirit of his Son … crying, “Abba! Father!” ’
15. You did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the spirit of sonship. For the construction compare 1 Corinthians 2:12, ‘we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is from God’; 2 Timothy 1:7, ‘God did not give us a spirit of timidity but a spirit of power and love and self-control.’ ‘Here is a beautiful chain of experimental verses, all cast in the same mould, all built upon the same pattern, with the negative first and the positive second; on one side bondage, worldliness, and fear; on the other sonship, spiritual gifts, power, love, and sanctified common-sense.’29
The spirit of sonship is so called because it is those who are led by the Spirit of God that are sons of God (verse 14). The word ‘sonship’ (huiothesia) is rendered ‘adoption as sons’ in verse 23. ‘In Christ Jesus’ believers ‘are all sons (and daughters) of God, through faith’ (Gal. 3:26), but their full instatement or manifestation as such will coincide with the resurrection (verses 19–23 below). The Spirit empowers them to anticipate this future consummation and to appreciate their present relationship as children to their Father. In Galatians 4:6 it is because they are his sons and daughters that God has given them ‘the Spirit of his Son’; when they address God by the same name as Jesus used, it is evident that the Spirit that animated Jesus has taken up residence in their lives.
The term ‘adoption’ (used here in older English versions) may have a somewhat artificial sound in our ears; but in the Roman world of the first century AD an adopted son was a son deliberately chosen by his adoptive father to perpetuate his name and inherit his estate; he was no whit inferior in status to a son born in the ordinary course of nature, and might well enjoy the father’s affection more fully and reproduce the father’s character more worthily.
‘Abba! Father!’ This phrase occurs in two other places in the New Testament—in Mark 14:36 (in Jesus’ prayer in Gethsemane) and Galatians 4:6 (quoted in note on verse 14 above). Abba is an Aramaic word (in the ‘emphatic state’) which came to be used among Jews (as it is to this day in Hebrew-speaking families) as the familiar term by which children address their father. In synagogue worship Jews did (and do) address God as their Father, but not by this form of the word. The fact that this form made its way into the worshipping vocabulary of the Gentile churches is best explained by Jesus’ characteristic use of it. There is strong presumption, too, that when he taught his disciples to begin their prayers with ‘Father, hallowed be thy name’ (Luke 11:2), the word they were encouraged to use for ‘Father’ was Abba. When this non-Greek word passed into the usage of Greek-speaking churches it was amplified by the addition of its Greek equivalent, ho patēr (the two forms being rendered together ‘Abba! Father!’). It is noteworthy that Paul takes it for granted that this invocation was as familiar to the Roman Christians, who were not his converts, as it was to the Galatian Christians, who were.
This is but a little word, and yet notwithstanding it comprehendeth all things. The mouth speaketh not, but the affection of the heart speaketh after this manner. Although I be oppressed with anguish and terror on every side, and seem to be forsaken and utterly cast away from thy presence, yet am I thy child, and thou art my Father for Christ’s sake: I am beloved because of the Beloved. Wherefore this little word, Father, conceived effectually in the heart, passeth all the eloquence of Demosthenes, Cicero, and of the most eloquent rhetoricians that ever were in the world. This matter is not expressed with words, but with groanings, which groanings cannot be uttered with any words or eloquence, for no tongue can express them.30
16. It is the Spirit himself bearing witness with our spirit. This is the New Testament basis of the doctrine of the ‘inward witness of the Holy Spirit’ (testimonium Spiritus sancti internum); cf. 1 John 5:7–8. For the relation of the Spirit of God to the spirit of the person whom he indwells, see note on verse 10 above.
That we are children of God. The word here is tekna, and not huioi, ‘sons’, as in verse 14; but the course of the argument shows that Paul is using the two terms interchangeably. In Galatians 3:23–4:7 he does indeed make a distinction between the period of infancy, when his readers were under the guardianship of the law, and the attainment of their responsible status as sons (huioi) of God, now that the gospel has been introduced. But their previous status is indicated by the term nēpioi (‘infants’), not tekna (‘children’). Nowhere in the New Testament can a valid distinction be made between being ‘children (tekna) of God’ and ‘sons (huioi) of God’. In the Johannine writings this relationship is expressed throughout by tekna (cf. John 1:12; 1 John 3:1–2), huios being reserved for Christ as the Son of God.
To call God ‘Father’, then, is as sure a token of the indwelling Spirit as to call Jesus ‘Lord’ (1 Cor. 12:3).
17. And if children, then heirs. Cf. Galatians 4:7 ‘you are no longer a slave but a son, and if a son then an heir.’ The equivalence of teknon and huios is again confirmed by the use of the former here in Romans, and of the latter in the Galatians parallel. Looking back in later years on what is commonly called his conversion, John Wesley described it as his exchanging ‘the faith of a servant’ for ‘the faith of a son’.31
Heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ. They are fellow heirs with Christ because the glory which they are to inherit by grace is the glory which is his by right (cf. John 17:22–24).
Provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him. The suffering is the indispensable prelude to the glory. Thus when Paul says (2 Cor. 4:16) that, ‘though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed every day’, he means that the very afflictions and privations which wear down the ‘outer nature’ are the means used by the Spirit of God to renew the inner being more and more, until at last the outer nature disappears altogether and the inner being (the ‘new man’) is fully formed after the image of Christ (cf. 2 Cor. 3:18; Col. 3:10). So also, in 2 Corinthians 4:10, he speaks of himself and his fellow apostles as ‘always carrying in the body the death [lit. ‘dying’] of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies’.
2. The glory to come (8:18–30)
But the glory to come far outweighs the affliction of the present. The affliction is light and temporary when compared with the all-surpassing and everlasting glory. So Paul, writing against a background of recent and (even for him) unparalleled tribulation, had assured his friends in Corinth a year or two before this that ‘this slight momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison’ (2 Cor. 4:17). It is not merely that the glory is a compensation for the suffering; it actually grows out of the suffering. There is an organic relation between the two for the believer as surely as there was for the Lord.
When the day of glory dawns, the glory will be manifested on a universal scale in the people of God, the glorified community of Christ. Something of the glory is already visible: Paul elsewhere sees a special splendour in the church as the fellowship of the reconciled, and thinks of it as being displayed even at this present time to celestial beings as God’s masterpiece of reconciliation: ‘that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the principalities and powers in the heavenly places’ (Eph. 3:10). But what is now seen in a limited and distorted fashion will be seen in perfection when the people of God at last attain the goal which he has ever had in view for them—complete conformity to his glorified Son.
But it is not only the people of God that have this hope of glory. All creation, says Paul, is waiting with earnest longing for the day when the sons of God will be manifested in glory. At present, as the Preacher proclaimed, ‘Vanity of vanities’ is writ large over all things beneath the sun (Eccl. 1:2; 12:8). But this vanity, this state of futility, frustration and bondage, is only temporary; just as humanity at present falls short of the glory of God, so creation as a whole cannot attend the full end for which it was brought into being. Like humanity, creation must be redeemed because, like humanity, creation has been subject to a fall.
The doctrine of a cosmic fall is implicit in the biblical record from Genesis 3 (where the ground is cursed for man’s sake) to Revelation 22 (where the curse is finally removed); it is indeed demanded by a world-outlook which endeavours to do justice to the biblical doctrine of creation and to the facts of life as we know them. 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. It is no accident that the redemption of ‘nature’ is here seen as coinciding with the redemption of man’s body—that part of his being which links him with the material creation. Man was put in charge of the ‘lower’ creation and involved it with him when he fell; through the redemptive work of the ‘second man’ the entail of the fall is broken not only for man himself but for the creation which is dependent on him.
Even now man, who by selfish exploitation can turn the good earth into a dust bowl, can by responsible stewardship make the desert blossom like the rose; what then will be the effect of a completely redeemed humanity on the creation entrusted to its care? When Isaiah looked forward to the peaceful coexistence of wolf and lamb in the new age, he voiced his hope in the language of poetry, but his poetry enshrines no pathetic fallacy but something much more biblical and substantial:
They shall not hurt or destroy
in all my holy mountain;for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the LORD
as the waters cover the sea (Isa. 11:9).
The Christian will neither hold that at present ‘all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds’, nor will he write the world off as belonging to the devil. The world is God’s world, and God will be glorified by all his works. And when the Creator is glorified, his creatures are blessed.
These words of Paul point not to the annihilation of the present material universe on the day of revelation, to be replaced by a universe entirely new, but to the transformation of the present universe so that it will fulfil the purpose for which God created it. Here again we hear the echo of an Old Testament hope—the creation of ‘new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells’ (2 Pet. 3:13, quoting Isa. 65:17; 66:22; cf. Rev. 21:1). But the transformation of the universe depends on the completion of man’s transformation by the working of God’s grace.
The grace of God has already begun to work in the lives of the justified; its continued working is sufficiently attested by the indwelling of the Spirit, and it is that same grace which, on ‘the day of Jesus Christ’, will bring to completion the work so well begun.
Grace all the work shall crown
To everlasting days;It lays in heaven the topmost stone,
And well deserves the praise.
But the indwelling of the Spirit is not only the evidence that God’s grace is continually at work within believers now; it is the guarantee of their coming glory—and more than the guarantee, it is the first instalment of that glory. There is no discontinuity between here and hereafter, so far as God’s working in and for his people is concerned.
If inanimate creation longs blindly for the day of its liberation, the community of the redeemed, who see the glory shining before them, strain forward intelligently for that consummation. For them it is the day when they will be publicly and universally acknowledged as the sons and daughters of God; for them, too, it is the day of resurrection, when the present body of humiliation will be transformed into the likeness of Christ’s glorified body, when the whole human personality will finally experience the benefits of his redemptive work.
This is the hope of the people of God—‘Christ in you, the hope of glory’, as Paul puts it in another letter (Col. 1:27). This hope is an essential element in their salvation; it enables them to accept the trials of the present, so that by patient endurance they may win their lives; it is, along with faith and love, one of the crowning graces of the Christian life.
In all the trials of the present, too, the indwelling Spirit aids by his intercession. The aspirations after holiness and glory which he creates in the lives of believers are too deep to be adequately articulated in words. At a certain stage of religious life the accurate form of words is regarded as essential to the efficacy of prayer; but when the human spirit is in closest harmony with the Spirit of God, words may not only prove inadequate; they may even hinder prayer. But God, before whom the thoughts of all are like an open book, recognizes in those unspoken ‘sighs’ deep in his people’s hearts the voice of the Spirit interceding for them in tune with his own will, and answers them accordingly.
Indeed, God’s overruling grace co-operates in all things for his people’s good, even in those things which at the time are so distressing and perplexing and hard to bear. ‘We know’ that this is so, says Paul, speaking as one who had proved its truth in his own experience, finding, for example, that his hardships turned out for the furtherance of the gospel (Phil. 1:12) and that his sorest and most disagreeable trials were the means by which the power of Christ rested on him (2 Cor. 12:9–10).
And now he lets his mind run back and forth to survey the whole course of God’s dealings with his people. Before the world’s foundation God foreknew and foreordained them for the day of final redemption, when they would be fully conformed to the image of his Son. The Son of God is himself ‘the image of the invisible God’ (Col. 1:15; cf. 2 Cor. 4:4). God’s creating mankind ‘in his image’ was an early step towards the accomplishment of his age-long purpose, to have creatures of his own sharing his glory as fully as it is possible for created beings to share their Creator’s glory. When the image of God in the old creation was defaced by sin, so that man as he now is falls short of the glory for which he was made, the purpose of God was not frustrated. When the due time arrived, the divine image was displayed on earth in the new Man, into whose image those who are united with him by faith are progressively changed—from one degree of glory to another—until the day when, to quote another New Testament writer, they will be perfectly conformed to his likeness, because they will see him ‘as he is’ (1 John 3:2).
18. The sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. Perhaps the idea of its being revealed ‘in us’ (eis hēmās) is also present. Cf. Luke 6:22–23, ‘Blessed are you when men hate you … Rejoice in that day, and leap for joy, for behold, your reward is great in heaven.’
19. The revealing of the sons of God. That is, their ‘adoption as sons’ (verse 23), coinciding with the ‘revelation’ (apokalypsis) of the Son of God (cf. 1 Cor. 1:7).
20. The creation was subjected to futility. In addition to implying futility (frustration, vanity), mataiotēs can also mean the worship of false gods (cf. Acts 14:15); the creation has been enslaved to malignant powers (cf. 1 Cor. 12:2).
By the will of him who subjected it. Not Adam, or the devil, but God; only he could be said to have subjected creation to futility in hope. In the light of 16:20, the ‘hope’ may be understood as first expressed in the promise of Genesis 3:15.
21. Because the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay. RV, NEB margin, NIV take hoti to mean ‘that’ rather than ‘because’, making the clause the substance of the hope (‘in hope that the creation itself …’).
Obtain the glorious liberty of the children of God. They are thus the first-fruits of the redeemed creation; cf. James 1:18, ‘Of his own will he brought us forth by the word of truth that we should be a kind of first fruits of his creatures.’ Instead of ‘glorious liberty’ we might render, literally, ‘liberty of the glory’—the glory of verse 18.
22. The whole creation has been groaning in travail together until now. This might be related to the current Jewish expectation of ‘the birth-pangs of the Messiah’ (the time of distress which would usher in the Messianic age; cf. Mark 13:8, NEB ‘the birth-pangs of the new age begin’). But the condition here described has apparently been going on since the fall; in any case, it carries with it the hope of new life for all creation.
23. The first fruits of the Spirit. The indwelling of the Spirit here and now is the ‘first fruits’ (aparchē), i.e. the ‘first instalment’ or ‘initial down-payment’ of the eternal heritage of glory that awaits believers. In 2 Corinthians 1:22; 5:5; Ephesians 1:14 the same teaching about the Spirit is conveyed by the use of Greek arrhabōn, ‘earnest’ or ‘pledge’.
It has been suggested that some readers of the letter may have inferred from Paul’s use of aparchē here that the possession of the Spirit is the believer’s ‘identification-card’, since there is papyrus evidence for this sense of the word. Although that is not precisely what Paul means, they would not have been far astray if they did make this inference, as something of this sort is implied by the ‘sealing’ with the Spirit in 2 Corinthians 1:22; Ephesians 1:13; 4:30. For another use of the aparchē figure see Romans 11:16 (pp. 215f.).
Groan inwardly. Cf. 2 Corinthians 5:2, ‘Here indeed we groan, and long to put on our heavenly dwelling.’
As we wait for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. The ‘adoption’ here is the full manifestation of the status of believers when they are invested as sons and daughters of God (cf. verses 14–17) and enter on the inheritance which is theirs by virtue of that status. ‘The redemption of our bodies’ is the resurrection, a theme on which Paul had recently enlarged in 2 Corinthians 4:7–5:10. The same hoped-for occasion is called ‘the day of redemption’ in Ephesians 4:30, where believers are said to be sealed with the Spirit in view of it.
24. In this hope we were saved. The aorist tense (esōthēmen) implies that the salvation is already ours; the phrase ‘in this hope’ indicates that our full enjoyment of it lies in the future.
25. If we hope for what we do not see. Cf. 2 Corinthians 4:18, ‘we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen; for the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.’
26. The Spirit himself intercedes for us. He is called the disciples’ ‘advocate’ (paraklētos) in John 14:16, 26; 15:26; 16:7 (see also note on verse 34, below). Cf. Ephesians 6:18, ‘Pray at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication.’ When believers pray ‘in the Spirit’, the Spirit himself intercedes on their behalf. (See p. 57.)
With sighs too deep for words. ‘Through our inarticulate groans’ (NEB). The noun stenagmos, like the verb stenazō (used in verse 23), may denote either sighing or groaning. Speaking to God in the Spirit with ‘tongues’ (1 Cor. 14:2) may be included in this expression, but it covers those longings and aspirations which well up from the depths of the spirit and cannot be imprisoned within the confines of everyday words. In such prayer it is the indwelling Spirit who prays, and his mind is immediately read by the Father to whom the prayer is addressed (verse 27). Moreover, these ‘inarticulate groans’ cannot be dissociated from the groaning of verse 23, with which believers (together with all creation) express their longing for the coming resurrection-glory, which will consummate the answer to all their prayers. (See p. 58 with n. 77.)
27–28. We know that in everything God works for good with those who love him. ‘We know’ expresses the knowledge of faith. Grammatically ‘all things’ may be either nominative (subject of ‘works together’; cf. AV) or (as is more probable) accusative. If accusative, it is either direct object (‘he works all things’) or (as is again more probable) adverbial (‘in everything’). RSV transfers the noun ‘God’ from its textual position as object after ‘love’ to an earlier point where it is made subject of ‘works’. Some ancient witnesses (including P46) read ‘God’ in both positions (cf. RV mg, ‘to them that love God God worketh all things with them for good’); this makes the construction excessively heavy. NEB happily revives an ancient and attractive interpretation which has in general received little attention from translators and commentators, according to which the subject of ‘works’ is the subject of the previous clause—the Spirit. Its rendering, then (taking verses 27b and 28a closely together) is: ‘… he pleads for God’s people in God’s own way; and in everything, as we know, he co-operates for good with those who love God.’32 (Cf. 1 Cor. 2:9 for the blessings prepared for those who love God.)
Who are called according to his purpose. They are ‘called’, not in the general sense in which ‘many are called, but few are chosen’, but in the sense of that ‘effectual calling’ which is ‘the work of God’s Spirit, whereby, convincing us of our sin and misery, enlightening our minds in the knowledge of Christ, and renewing our wills, he doth persuade and enable us to embrace Jesus Christ, freely offered to us in the gospel.’33 Cf. 1:6 (‘called to belong to Jesus Christ’); 1:7 (‘called to be saints’); 9:11 (‘because of his call’).
29. For those whom he foreknew he also predestined. God’s foreknowledge here connotes that electing grace which is frequently implied by the verb ‘to know’ in the Old Testament. When God takes knowledge of people in this special way, he sets his choice on them. Cf. Amos 3:2 (‘You only have I known of all the families of the earth’); Hosea 13:5 (‘It was I who knew you in the wilderness’). We may compare Paul’s language in 1 Corinthians 8:3 (‘if one loves God, one is known by him’); Galatians 4:9 (‘you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God’). This aspect of the divine knowledge is emphasized also in the Qumran Rule of the Community: ‘From the God of Knowledge comes all that is and shall be. Before ever they existed He established their whole design, and when, as ordained for them, they come into being, it is in accord with His glorious design that they fulfil their work.’34
To be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the first-born among many brethren. The new creation, the community of men and women conformed to the image of Christ, who is himself the image of God (2 Cor. 4:4; Col. 1:15), is seen to have been from the beginning the object of God’s foreknowledge and foreordaining mercy. The fulfilment of this purpose is involved, for New Testament writers, in the creative words of Genesis 1:26, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.’ The old creation in itself is insufficient for the realization of this goal; it requires the redemptive work of Christ and his consequent status as head of the new creation. He who is ‘the first-born of all creation’ in the old order because ‘all things were created through him and for him’ is also by resurrection the head of a new order, ‘the beginning, the first-born from the dead’ (Col. 1:15–18). His ‘many brethren’ are, by the new birth, heirs of eternal life in him.
30. Those whom he predestined he also called; and those whom he called he also justified. The people of God respond to his call in faith, and by faith they are justified.
And those whom he justified he also glorified. The glorifying of God’s people forms the climax of the ‘sorites’—the literary construction employed in verses 29 and 30, in which the logical predicate of one clause becomes the logical subject of the next. More importantly, it forms the climax of the divine purpose; it involves their ultimate and complete conformity to the image of Christ. ‘When Christ who is our life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory’ (Col. 3:4; cf. 1 John 3:2).
This, then, is the purpose of God’s gracious predestination—the creation of a new race sharing and displaying the Creator’s glory (cf. 5:2). The successive stages in the accomplishment are set out clause by clause. The foreknowing and foreordaining belong to God’s eternal counsel; the calling and the justifying have taken place in his people’s experience; but the glory, so far as their experience is concerned, lies in the future. Why then does Paul use the same aorist tense for this as he uses for the other acts of God? Perhaps he is imitating the Hebrew use of the ‘prophetic past’, by which a predicted event is marked out as so certain of fulfilment that it is described as though it had already taken place.35 As a matter of history, the people of God have not yet been glorified; so far as the divine decree is concerned, however, their glory has been determined from all eternity, hence—‘those whom he justified he also glorified.’
Why does Paul move directly here from justification to glory, without saying anything about the Christian’s present experience of sanctification by the power of the Spirit? Partly, no doubt, because the coming glory has been in the forefront of his mind; but even more because the difference between sanctification and glory is one of degree only, not one of kind. Sanctification is progressive conformity to the mind or image of Christ here and now (cf. 2 Cor. 3:18; Col. 3:10); glory is perfect conformity to the image of Christ there and then. Sanctification is glory begun; glory is sanctification consummated. Paul looks forward to the consummation of the work of grace—a consummation guaranteed by its inception: ‘he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ’ (Phil. 1:6).
3. The triumph of faith (8:31–39)
Could there be any stronger encouragement to faith than the contemplation of God’s saving purpose for his people, moving forward to its predestined consummation? Since God is their strong salvation, what force can prevail against them? Since his love was supremely manifested in the sacrifice of his own Son on their behalf, what good thing will he withhold from them? Paul for a moment envisages the situation in terms of a court of justice, where the believer stands to be judged. But who will dare to come forward as prosecutor? God himself, the Judge of all, has pronounced acquittal and justification; who can call his sentence in question? The prosecutor may not venture to appear, but counsel for the defence is present and active: the Christ who died and rose again is enthroned at God’s right hand, making prevalent intercession for his people. Nothing can come between them and his love—not all the trials and afflictions which they have experienced or may yet experience. In the spiritual conflict mighty forces, supernatural as well as natural, are arrayed against them, but through him they overcome them all and remain irrevocably encircled and empowered by his unchanging love.
32. He who did not spare his own Son. An echo of Genesis 22:12, 15, where God says to Abraham, ‘you have not withheld [LXX ‘spared’, Gk. pheidomai, as here] your son, your only son.’ The ‘binding of Isaac’ (the title traditionally given by Jews to the narrative of Gen. 22:1–19) probably plays a greater part in Paul’s thinking about the sacrifice of Christ than appears on the surface.36 In Jewish interpretation it is treated as the classic example of the redemptive efficacy of martyrdom.
Will he not also give us all things with him? Cf. Matthew 6:33, ‘all these things shall be yours as well.’
33–34. It is God who justifies; who is to condemn? In the forensic language of this passage we catch an unmistakable echo of the challenge of the Servant of the Lord in Isaiah 50:8–9, ‘He who vindicates me is near. Who will contend with me? Let us stand up together. Who is my adversary? Let him come near to me. Behold, the Lord GOD helps me; who will declare me guilty?’ When God enters into judgment, the outlook for the opposing party is bleak (Rom. 3:4); but if God takes the side of the defendant, no amount of evidence for the prosecution can procure an adverse verdict. A good Old Testament illustration is the silence of Satan, chief prosecutor in the heavenly court, when God declares his acceptance of Joshua the high priest (Zech. 3:1–5).
34. Who is at the right hand of God. An echo of Psalm 110:1, ‘The LORD says to my lord: “Sit at my right hand, till I make your enemies your footstool.” ’ These words, whose Messianic reference was apparently accepted by Jewish scribes of our Lord’s time (cf. Mark 12:35–37), were applied to Jesus from the earliest days of the church, and form the biblical foundation of the doctrine of his exaltation and session at the Father’s right hand—that is, in the place of supremacy over the universe.
But one day, as I was passing in the field, and that too with some dashes on my conscience, fearing lest yet all was not right, suddenly this sentence fell upon my soul, ‘Thy righteousness is in heaven’; and methought withal, I saw, with the eyes of my soul, Jesus Christ at God’s right hand; there, I say, is my righteousness; so that wherever I was, or whatever I was a-doing, God could not say of me, ‘He wants my righteousness’, for that was just before him. I also saw, moreover, that it was not my good frame of heart that made my righteousness better, nor yet my bad frame that made my righteousness worse; for my righteousness was Jesus Christ Himself, the same yesterday, and today, and for ever.37
Who indeed intercedes for us. An echo of the fourth Servant Song (Isa. 52:13–53:12): the Servant ‘made intercession for the transgressors’ (Isa. 53:12; see note on Rom. 4:25, p. 123). The Targum of Jonathan speaks of the Servant-Messiah as making entreaty for trespasses not only in Isaiah 53:12 but also in verses 4 and 11. So believers have an intercessor or ‘advocate’ with the Father (cf. 1 John 2:1) as well as an intercessor here (verse 27).
36. As it is written, ‘For thy sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.’ A quotation from Psalm 44:22, a plea to God for speedy aid in a time of sore distress for Israel.
37. In all these things. Possibly a Hebraism, meaning ‘despite all these things’, ‘for all that’.
We are more than conquerors. Greek hypernikōmen, ‘we are super-conquerors.’
38. Nor principalities, … nor powers. The principalities and powers are the forces of evil in the universe, the ‘spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places’ of Ephesians 6:12. It may be that not all principalities and powers are hostile, but if any are well-disposed, they would not attempt to separate believers from the love of Christ.
Nor things present, nor things to come. Perhaps a reference to the two ages (this age and the coming one); but ‘things to come’ may well include hazards yet to be experienced in this mortal life.
39. Nor height, nor depth. ‘Height’ and ‘depth’ were technical terms in astrology, and later in Gnosticism. Paul need not have had their technical significance in mind; but if he had, they would be closely associated with the principalities and powers that were believed to control the movements of the heavenly bodies, especially the planets, and thus to control the destinies of mortals. But fate, whether real or imaginary, has no power over those whose ‘life is hid with Christ in God’ (Col. 3:3). Nothing in the course of time, nor in the expanses of space, nothing in the whole universe can sever the children of God from their Father’s love, secured to them in Christ.