11. God’s Spirit in God’s children

Romans 8 is without doubt one of the best-known, best-loved chapters of the Bible. If in Romans 7 Paul has been preoccupied with the place of the law, his preoccupation in Romans 8 is with the work of the Spirit. In chapter 7 the law and its synonyms were mentioned some thirty-one times, but the Holy Spirit only once (6), whereas in the first twenty-seven verses of chapter 8 he is referred to nineteen times by name. The essential contrast which Paul paints is between the weakness of the law and the power of the Spirit. For over against indwelling sin, which is the reason the law is unable to help us in our moral struggle (7:17, 20), Paul now sets the indwelling Spirit, who is both our liberator now from ‘the law of sin and death’ (8:2) and the guarantee of resurrection and eternal glory in the end (8:11, 17, 23). So the Christian life is essentially life in the Spirit, that is to say, a life which is animated, sustained, directed and enriched by the Holy Spirit. Without the Holy Spirit true Christian discipleship would be inconceivable, indeed impossible.

In handling the topic of the Holy Spirit, however, the apostle relates it to his other overarching theme in this chapter, namely the absolute security of the children of God. According to Charles Hodge, ‘the whole chapter is a series of arguments, most beautifully arranged, in support of this one point’. And Dr Martyn Lloyd-Jones agrees with him. ‘I make bold to assert that the great theme of chapter 8 is not sanctification . . . The great theme is the security of the Christian.’ At the same time, the two topics are closely related. For possession of the Spirit is the hallmark of those who truly belong to Christ (9); his inner witness assures us that we are God’s children and therefore his heirs (15–17); and his presence in us is the firstfruits of our inheritance, pledging the final harvest (23).

The chapter divides itself naturally into three sections. The first depicts the varied ministry of God’s Spirit in liberating, indwelling, sanctifying, leading, witnessing to and finally resurrecting the children of God (1–17). The second treats the future glory of God’s children, portrayed as a final freedom in which the whole creation will share (18–27). And third, Paul emphasizes the steadfastness of God’s love, as he works in all things for the good of those who love him and promises that nothing will ever be allowed to separate us from his love (28–39). The apostle’s perspective stretches our minds, as he ranges from eternity to eternity. He begins with ‘no condemnation’ (1) and ends with ‘no separation’ (39), in both cases for those who are ‘in Christ Jesus’.

1. The ministry of God’s Spirit (8:1–17)

The word Therefore, with which the chapter begins, indicates that the apostle is summing up, or expressing a provisional conclusion. The deduction he draws, however, does not seem to come from chapter 7 alone, but from his whole argument thus far, and specially from what he has written in chapters 3, 4 and 5 about salvation through the death and resurrection of Christ. And the word now emphasizes that this salvation is already ours if we are in Christ, as opposed to being in Adam (5:12ff.).

The first blessing of salvation is expressed in the words no condemnation, which are equivalent to ‘justification’. In fact, the opening statements of Romans 5 and Romans 8 complement each other. Chapter 5 begins with the positive declaration: ‘Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.’ Chapter 8 begins with the negative counterpart: Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Paul will almost immediately go on to explain that our not being condemned is due to God’s action of condemning our sin in Christ (3). Then later in the chapter he will argue that nobody can accuse us because God has justified us (33), and that nobody can condemn us because Christ died, was raised, is at God’s right hand and is interceding for us (34). In other words, our justification, together with its corresponding truth of ‘no condemnation’, is securely grounded in what God has done for us in and through Jesus Christ.

a. The freedom of the Spirit (8:2–4)

The second privilege of salvation is expressed in the next statement: because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death (2). Thus a certain ‘liberation’ joins ‘no condemnation’ as the two great blessings which are ours if we are ‘in Christ Jesus’ (a clause which is applied to both in the Greek of verses 1 and 2). Moreover, these two blessings are linked by the conjunction because, indicating that our liberation is the basis of our justification. It is because we have been liberated that no condemnation can overtake us.

From what, then, have we been set free? Paul replies: from the law of sin and death. The context seems to demand that this is a description of God’s law, of Torah. For a major emphasis of Romans 7 has been on the relation between the law on the one hand and sin and death on the other. It is true that Paul was at pains to stress that the law is not itself sinful, yet he added that it reveals, provokes and condemns sin (7:7–9). It is also true that he stressed that the law does not ‘become death’ to people; yet it had ‘brought about death’ in him (7:13). So, shocking as it may sound, God’s holy law could be called the law of sin and death because it led to both. In this case, to be liberated from the law of sin and death through Christ is to be no longer ‘under the law’, that is, to give up looking to the law for either justification or sanctification.

This liberation has been Paul’s own experience. It is worth noting that verse 2 contains the only use in Romans 8 of the first person singular (set me free, niv mg.), which has been such a prominent feature of Romans 7. By this Paul is indicating that he has himself been delivered, in Christ and through the Spirit, from the law and so from the humiliating situation with which he identified himself at the end of Romans 7.

The means of our liberation Paul calls the law of the Spirit who gives life (2). At first sight it seems strange that law should liberate us from law, especially when commentators are determined to give ‘law’ the same meaning in both expressions. Some take ‘law’ as meaning ‘principle’ or ‘power’, and translate ‘the power of the Spirit of life’ which frees us from ‘the power of sin and death’, but both expressions are then too imprecise to be meaningful. Professor Dunn argues that in both cases the law is Torah, the Old Testament law of Moses, and that Paul is reaffirming ‘the two-sidedness of the law’ as a law of both death and life, that is, of sin and death belonging to the old age, and of Spirit and life belonging to the new. But it is questionable whether the Romans would have grasped this subtlety.

The alternative is to understand ‘the law of the Spirit who gives life’ as describing the gospel, just as Paul calls it elsewhere ‘the ministry of the Spirit’. This makes the best sense, as it is certainly the gospel which has freed us from the law and its curse, and the message of life in the Spirit from the slavery of sin and death.

How the gospel liberates us from the law is explained in verses 3–4. The first and fundamental truth which Paul declares is that God has taken the initiative to do what the law [even though it was his own law] was powerless to do. The law could neither justify nor sanctify. Why not? Because it was weakened by the flesh (3a). That is, the powerlessness of the law is not intrinsic. It is not in itself but in us, in our ‘flesh’ (sarx), our fallen selfish nature (cf. 7:14–20). So then, what the sin-weakened law could not do, God did. He made provision for both our justification and our sanctification. First, he sent his Son, whose incarnation and atonement are referred to in verse 3, and then he gave us his Spirit through whose indwelling power we are enabled to fulfil the law’s requirement, which is mentioned in verse 4 and expanded in the following paragraph. So God justifies us through his Son and sanctifies us through his Spirit. The plan of salvation is essentially trinitarian. For God’s way of justification is not law but grace (through the death of Christ), and his way of sanctification is not law but the Spirit (through his indwelling).

What God did Paul unfolds in five expressions. First came the sending of his own Son. The word ‘sending’ does not necessarily imply the Son’s pre-existence, since God is also said to have ‘sent’ his prophets in the Old Testament and his apostles in the New, who of course were not pre-existent. Nevertheless, the statement that it was his own Son whom he sent may well be intended to indicate that he had enjoyed a prior life of intimacy with the Father; it certainly expresses the Father’s sacrificial love in sending him (cf. 5:8, 10; 8:32).

Second, the sending of the divine Son involved his becoming incarnate, a human being, which is expressed by the words in the likeness of sinful flesh. This somewhat roundabout phrase, which has puzzled commentators mainly because of its use of ‘likeness’, was doubtless intended to combat false views of the incarnation. That is, the Son came neither ‘in the likeness of flesh’, only seeming to be human, as the Docetists taught, for his humanity was real; nor ‘in sinful flesh’, assuming a fallen nature, for his humanity was sinless, but ‘in the likeness of sinful flesh’, because his humanity was both real and sinless simultaneously.

Third, God sent his Son to be a sin offering. The Greek expression peri hamartias (literally, ‘concerning sin’) could be a general statement without any indication how he did it. But the reference is probably specifically to the sacrificial nature of his death. For peri hamartias was the usual rendering in the Greek text of the Septuagint of the Hebrew for ‘sin offering’ in Leviticus and Numbers, and should clearly be translated ‘sin offering’ in Hebrews 10:6, 8 and 13:11. And since the sin offering was prescribed specially for the atoning of ‘unwilling sins’, which is exactly what the sins of Romans 7 are (‘I do what I do not want to do’, 20), Tom Wright concludes, ‘There can no longer be any room for doubt that when Paul wrote kai peri hamartias he meant the words to carry their regular biblical overtones, i.e. “and as a sin offering”.’ In any case, ‘in the likeness of sinful flesh’ is clearly a reference to the incarnation, and ‘to be a sin offering’ to the atonement.

Fourth, God . . . condemned sin in the flesh, that is, in the flesh or humanity of Jesus, real and sinless, although made sin with our sins. God judged our sins in the sinless humanity of his Son, who bore them in our place. Friedrich Büchsel points out that ‘when it [katakrinein, to condemn] refers to human judgment there is a clear distinction between the condemnation and its execution’. But in the case of the divine katakrinein ‘the two can be seen as one’. Hence in Romans 8:3 ‘the pronouncement and execution of the sentence’ are both included. The law condemns sin, in the sense of expressing disapproval of it, but when God condemned sin in his Son, his judgment fell upon it in him. As Charles Cranfield puts it, ‘for those who are in Christ Jesus . . . there is no divine condemnation, since the condemnation they deserve has already been fully borne for them by him’.

Fifth, Paul clarifies the ultimate reason God sent his own Son and condemned our sin in him. It was in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the flesh but according to the Spirit (4). We might have expected Paul to write that ‘God condemned sin in Jesus in order that we might escape the condemnation’, that is, ‘in order that we might be justified’. Indeed, this was the immediate purpose of the sin-bearing death of God’s Son. Consequently, most of the early Fathers, the Reformers and subsequent Reformed commentators seem to have interpreted Paul’s statement of verse 4 in the same way. Hodge, for example, insists that verse 4 ‘must be understood of justification, and not of sanctification. He condemned sin, in order that the demands of the law might be satisfied’, the law’s main demand being the sentence of death for sin. Yet if God’s purpose in sending his Son was limited to our justification, the addition of the final clause (who . . . live . . . according to the Spirit) would not make sense.

It is this phrase which directs our attention to law-abiding Christian behaviour as the ultimate purpose of God’s action through Christ. In this case the law’s dikaiōma or righteous requirement refers to the commandments of the moral law viewed as a whole, which God wants to be fully met in his people. For Jesus had himself spoken of fulfilling the law, and Paul will write later of neighbour-love as the chief fulfilment of the law (13:8–10). Moreover, the law can be fulfilled only in those who do not live according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. The flesh renders the law powerless, the Spirit empowers us to obey it. This is not perfectionism; it is simply to say that obedience is a necessary and possible aspect of Christian discipleship. Although the law cannot secure this obedience, the Spirit can.

Some modern scholars find Paul hopelessly confused, even self-contradictory, since he writes of both the abolition and the fulfilment of the law, of our being both released from it and committed to it, our release and our obligation being both attributable to Christ’s death (7:4; 8:3–4)! The most outspoken critic of Paul’s supposed inconsistency is Heikki Räisänen. He rejects all tributes to Paul which depict him as a profound, logical, consistent theologian. Instead, ‘contradictions and tensions have to be accepted as constant features of Paul’s theology of the law’. In particular, ‘we find two conflicting lines of thought in Paul’s theology of the law. Paul asserts both the abolition of the law and also its permanently normative character.’ Indeed, ‘Paul’s thought on the law is full of difficulties and inconsistencies’, for (Dr Räisänen presses the question) how could a divine institution be abolished or abrogated? But I fail to see any inconsistency in Paul’s declarations that, because the law is unable to justify or sanctify us, it has been abolished in those roles, whereas the Spirit can enable us to fulfil or keep the moral law. This was certainly the prophetic expectation. Through Ezekiel God promised, ‘I will put my Spirit in you’, and through Jeremiah, ‘I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts.’ These promises are synonymous. When God puts his Spirit in our hearts, he writes his law there.

Verse 4 is of great importance for our understanding of Christian holiness. First, holiness is the ultimate purpose of the incarnation and the atonement. The end God had in view when sending his Son was not our justification only, through freedom from the condemnation of the law, but also our holiness, through obedience to the commandments of the law. Second, holiness consists in fulfilling the just requirement of the law. This is the final answer to antinomians. The moral law has not been abolished for us; it is to be fulfilled in us. Although law-obedience is not the ground of our justification (it is in this sense that we are ‘not under the law, but under grace’), it is the fruit of it and the very meaning of sanctification. Holiness is Christlikeness, and Christlikeness is fulfilling the righteousness of the law. Third, holiness is the work of the Holy Spirit. Romans 7 insists that we cannot keep the law because of our indwelling ‘flesh’; Romans 8:4 insists that we can and must because of the indwelling Spirit.

Looking back over the whole passage which runs from 7:1 to 8:4, the continuing place of the law in the Christian life should be clear. Our freedom from the law (proclaimed for instance in 7:4, 6 and 8:2) is not freedom to disobey it. On the contrary the law-obedience of the people of God is so important to God that he sent his Son to die for us and his Spirit to live in us, in order to secure it. Holiness is the fruit of trinitarian grace, of the Father sending his Son into the world and his Spirit into our hearts.

b. The mind of the Spirit (8:5–8)

Paul has asserted that the only people in whom the law’s righteous requirement can be fulfilled are those who live not kata sarka (according to flesh) but kata pneuma (according to spirit, or better, the Spirit), that is, those who follow the promptings and surrender to the control of the Spirit rather than the flesh. It is this contrast between flesh and Spirit which Paul now develops in verses 5–8. Implicitly or explicitly, it recurs in every verse. Paul’s purpose is to explain why obedience to the law is possible only to those who walk according to the Spirit.

We begin with some definitions. By sarx (flesh) Paul means neither the soft muscular tissue which covers our bony skeleton, nor our bodily instincts and appetites, but rather the whole of our humanness viewed as corrupt and unredeemed, ‘our fallen, egocentric human nature’, or more briefly ‘the sin-dominated self’. By pneuma (spirit) in this passage Paul means not the higher aspect of our humanness viewed as ‘spiritual’ (although in verse 16 he will refer to our human spirit), but rather the personal Holy Spirit himself who now not only regenerates but also indwells the people of God. This tension between ‘flesh’ and ‘Spirit’ reminds us of Galatians 5:16–26, where they are in irreconcilable conflict with each other. Here Paul concentrates on the ‘mind’, or (as we would say) ‘mindset’, of those who are characterized by either sarx or pneuma.

First, our mindset expresses our basic nature as Christians or non-Christians. On the one hand, there are those who live according to the flesh. They are not now those who ‘walk’ according to it (4, literally) but those who simply ‘are’ like this (5, literally). These people have their minds set on what the flesh desires, whereas those who live in accordance with the Spirit [literally, ‘those according to the Spirit’ – there is no verb] have their minds set on what the Spirit desires (5). The meaning surely is not that people are like this because they think like this, although that is partly true, but that they think like this because they are like this. The expressions are descriptive. In both cases their nature determines their mindset. Moreover, since the flesh is our twisted human nature, its desires are all those things which pander to our ungodly self-centredness. Since the Spirit is the Holy Spirit himself, however, his desires are all those things which please him who loves above all else to glorify Christ, that is, to show Christ to us and form Christ in us.

Now to ‘set the mind’ (phroneō) on the desires of sarx or pneuma is to make them the ‘absorbing objects of thought, interest, affection and purpose’. It is a question of what preoccupies us, of the ambitions which drive us and the concerns which engross us, of how we spend our time and our energies, of what we concentrate on and give ourselves up to. All this is determined by who we are, whether we are still ‘in the flesh’ or are now by new birth ‘in the Spirit’.

Second, our mindset has eternal consequences. The mind governed by the flesh is death, but the mind governed by the Spirit [literally, ‘of the Spirit’] is life and peace (6). That is, the mindset of flesh-dominated people is already one of spiritual death and leads inevitably to eternal death, for it alienates them from God and makes fellowship with him impossible in either this world or the next. The mindset of Spirit-dominated people, however, results in life and peace. On the one hand, they are ‘alive to God’ (6:11), alert to spiritual realities, and thirsty for God like nomads in the desert, like deer panting for streams. On the other hand, they have peace with God (5:1), peace with their neighbour (12:16) and peace within, enjoying an inner integration or harmony. We would surely pursue holiness with greater eagerness if we were convinced that it is the way of life and peace.

Third, our mindset concerns our fundamental attitude to God. The reason the mind of the flesh is death is that it is hostile to God, cherishing a deep-seated animosity against him. It is antagonistic to his name, kingdom and will, to his day, his people and his word, to his Son, his Spirit and his glory. In particular, Paul singles out his moral standards. In contrast to the regenerate who ‘delight’ in God’s law (7:22), the unregenerate mind does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so (7), which explains why those who live according to the flesh cannot fulfil the law’s righteous requirement (4). Finally, those who are in the realm of the flesh (sarx), literally those who are ‘in flesh’ (en sarki) or unregenerate, lacking the Spirit of God, cannot please God (8). They ‘cannot’ please him (8) because they ‘cannot’ submit to his law (7), whereas, it is implied, those who are in the Spirit set themselves to please him in everything, even to do so ‘more and more’.

To sum up, here are two categories of people (the unregenerate who are ‘in the flesh’ and the regenerate who are ‘in the Spirit’), who have two perspectives or mindsets (‘the mind of the flesh’ and ‘the mind of the Spirit’), which lead to two patterns of conduct (living according to the flesh or the Spirit), and result in two spiritual states (death or life, enmity or peace). Thus our mind, where we set it and how we occupy it, plays a key role in both our present conduct and our final destiny.

c. The indwelling of the Spirit (8:9–13)

In verse 9 Paul applies to his readers personally the truths he has so far been explaining in general terms. Having been writing in the third person plural, he now shifts to the second person and addresses his readers directly. You, however, are not in the realm of the flesh but are in the realm of the Spirit. Paul immediately clarifies what he means by adding if indeed the Spirit of God lives in you (9a). Thus you are in the Spirit if the Spirit is in you, for the same truth can be expressed in terms either of our personal relationship to the Spirit or of his dwelling in us, the latter denoting ‘a settled permanent penetrative influence’. This also means, Paul continues, that if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, they do not belong to Christ (9b).

Verse 9 is of great importance in relation to our doctrine of the Holy Spirit for at least two reasons. First, it teaches that the hallmark of the authentic believer is the possession or indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Indwelling sin (7:17, 20) is the lot of all the children of Adam; the privilege of the children of God is to have the indwelling Spirit to fight and subdue indwelling sin. As Jesus had promised, ‘he lives with you and will be in you’. Now in fulfilment of this promise every true Christian has received the Spirit, so that our body has become a ‘temple of the Holy Spirit’ in which he dwells. On the other hand, if we do not have Christ’s Spirit in us, we do not belong to Christ at all. This makes it plain that the gift of the Spirit is an initial and universal blessing, received when we first repent and believe in Jesus. Of course there may be many further and richer experiences of the Spirit, and many fresh anointings of the Spirit for special tasks, but the personal indwelling of the Spirit is every believer’s privilege from the beginning. To know Christ and to have the Spirit are one. Bishop Handley Moule was wise to write that ‘there is no separable “Gospel of the Spirit”. Not for a moment are we to advance, as it were, from the Lord Jesus Christ to a higher or deeper region, ruled by the Holy Spirit.’

Second, verse 9 teaches that several different expressions mean the same thing. We have already seen that being in the Spirit is the same as having the Spirit in us. Now we note that ‘the Spirit of God’ is also called ‘the Spirit of Christ’, and that to have the Spirit of Christ in us (9b) is to have Christ in us (10a). This is not to confuse the persons of the Trinity by identifying the Father with the Son or the Son with the Spirit. It is rather to emphasize that, although they are eternally distinct in their personal modes of being, they also share the same divine essence and will. In consequence, they are inseparable. What the Father does he does through the Son, and what the Son does he does through the Spirit. Indeed, wherever each is, there are the others also.

After affirming that to have the Spirit in us is the distinguishing mark of Christ’s people, Paul proceeds to indicate two major consequences of his indwelling. The first he describes in terms of ‘life’ (10–11) and the second in terms of obligation (12–13). Both verse 10 and verse 11 begin with an ‘if’ clause relating to this indwelling: But if Christ is in you (10), And if the Spirit . . . is living in you (11). These two ‘ifs’ do not express any doubt about the fact of the indwelling (they could be paraphrased, ‘if, as indeed is the case’), but they point to its results.

The exact meaning of verse 10 is disputed: though the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness (nrsv). Two main questions are raised. The first is: what death of the body is being referred to? Some suggest that the body (sōma) simply means ‘you’, and that you are dead in the sense that you have died with Christ, as explained in 6:2ff. Ernst Käsemann, for example, goes so far as to state that ‘the only possible reference is to the death of the body of sin effected in baptism’. But the reluctance to allow ‘body’ to mean our material body is strange, especially in a context which goes on to speak of its resurrection (11), and the body can hardly be already dead since the apostle goes on to write of the need to put its misdeeds to death (13). It is, therefore, much better to understand dead as indicating ‘mortal’, that is, subject to death (niv) and destined for it. This would fit in with Paul’s references in Romans to our ‘mortal bodies’ (e.g. 6:12; 8:11b) and elsewhere to our physical decaying and dying. It is also true to experience. As Dr Lloyd-Jones has put it, writing as a doctor as well as a pastor:

The moment we enter into this world and begin to live, we also begin to die. Your first breath is one of the last you will ever take! . . . the principle of decay, leading to death, is in every one of us.

At the same time, in the midst of our physical mortality, your spirit is alive (niv mg.), for we have been made alive in Christ (cf. 6:11, 13, 23). What, however, is the cause of this double condition, namely a dying body and a living spirit? The answer lies in the repeated because, which attributes death to sin and life to righteousness. Since Paul has already made this attribution in his Adam–Christ parallelism in chapter 5, he must surely be saying that our bodies became mortal because of Adam’s sin (‘to dust you will return’), whereas our spirits are alive because of Christ’s righteousness (5:15–18, 21), that is, because of the righteous standing he has secured for us.

The ultimate destiny of our body is not death, however, but resurrection. Paul now proceeds to this further truth in verse 11. Our bodies are not yet redeemed (23), but they will be, and we are eagerly awaiting this event. How can we be so sure about it? Because of the nature of the indwelling Spirit. He is not only ‘the Spirit who gives life’ (2), but the Spirit of resurrection. For he is the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead. Therefore the God whose Spirit he is, namely he who raised Christ from the dead, will also give life to your mortal bodies, and will do it because of his Spirit, who lives in you (11). We note this further unselfconscious reference to the three persons of the Trinity – the resurrecting Father, the resurrected Son and the Spirit of resurrection. Further, Christ’s resurrection is the promise and the pattern of ours. The same Spirit who raised him will also raise us. The same Spirit who gives life to our spirits (10) will also give life to our bodies (11).

This does not mean that our dead bodies will be resuscitated, and so restored to their present material existence, only to die again. No, resurrection includes transformation, the raising and changing of our body into a new and glorious vehicle of our personality, and its liberation from all frailty, disease, pain, decay and death. It is ‘not that the spirit is to be freed from the body – as many, under the influence of the Greek way of thinking, have held – but rather that the Spirit will give life to the body’.

Already we express our personality through our body, especially by speech, but also by posture and gesture, by a look in our eyes or an expression on our face. We call it ‘body language’. But the language which our present body speaks is imperfect; we easily miscommunicate. Our new body will not have this limitation, however. There will be a perfect correspondence between message and medium, between what we want to communicate and how we do so. The resurrection body will be the perfect vehicle of our redeemed personality.

We come now to the second consequence of the dwelling in us of God or Christ through the Spirit. The first was life; the second is an obligation. Therefore, brothers and sisters, we have an obligation (12). What is this? It is not now to share the gospel with the world (as in 1:14), but to live a righteous life. We have no obligation to the flesh [sarx], to live according to it (12). It has no claim on us. We owe it nothing. Our obligation is rather (this is inferred, since Paul does not complete the expected contrast) to the Spirit, to live according to his desires and dictates.

Paul’s argument seems to be this: if the indwelling Spirit has given us life, which he has (10), we cannot possibly live according to the flesh, since that way lies death. How can we possess life and court death simultaneously? Such an inconsistency between who we are and how we behave is unthinkable, even ludicrous. No, we are in debt to the indwelling Spirit of life to live out our God-given life and to put to death everything which threatens it or is incompatible with it.

Verse 13 sets the option before us as a solemn life-and-death alternative, which is made the more impressive by Paul’s renewed resort to direct address. For if you live according to the flesh [which he has just declared in verse 12 not to be a Christian obligation], you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live (13). That is, there is a kind of life which leads to death, and there is a kind of death which leads to life. Verse 13 thus becomes a very significant verse on the neglected topic of ‘mortification’ (the process of putting to death the body’s misdeeds). It makes clear at least three truths about it.

First, what is mortification? Mortification is neither masochism (taking pleasure in self-inflicted pain), nor asceticism (resenting and rejecting the fact that we have bodies and natural bodily appetites). It is rather a clear-sighted recognition of evil as evil, leading to such a decisive and radical rejection of it that no imagery can do it justice except ‘putting to death’. In fact, the verb Paul uses normally means to ‘kill someone, hand someone over to be killed, especially of the death sentence and its execution’ (BAGD on thanatoō). Elsewhere the apostle has called it a crucifixion of our fallen nature, with all its passions and desires. And this teaching is Paul’s expansion of Jesus’ own summons: ‘Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.’ Since the Romans compelled condemned criminals to carry their cross to the site of crucifixion, to carry our cross is symbolic of following Jesus to the place of execution. And what we are to put to death there, Paul explains, is the misdeeds of the body, that is, every use of our body (our eyes, ears, mouth, hands or feet) which serves ourselves instead of God and other people. Some scholars, doubtless anxious to avoid the dualism which regards the body itself as evil, suggest that by sōma (the body) Paul really means sarx (the flesh, or sinful nature), and one or two manuscripts do contain this word. So Charles Cranfield renders the phrase ‘the activities and schemings of the sinful flesh, of human self-centredness and self-assertion’. But it seems better to retain sōma, to bear in mind that the word for misdeeds is actually neutral (praxeis, deeds or actions), and to allow the context to determine whether they are good or (as here) evil.

Second, how does mortification take place? We note at once that it is something that we have to do. It is not a question of dying or of being put to death, but of putting to death. In the work of mortification we are not passive, waiting for it to be done to us or for us. On the contrary, we are responsible for putting evil to death. It is true that Paul says that we can put to death the misdeeds of the body only by the Spirit, by his agency and power. For only he can give us the desire, determination and discipline to reject evil. Nevertheless, it is we who must take the initiative to act. Negatively, we must totally reject everything we know to be wrong, and not even ‘think about how to gratify the desires of the flesh’ (13:14). This is not an unhealthy form of repression, pretending that evil does not exist in us and refusing to face it. It is the opposite. We have to ‘pull it out, look at it, denounce it, hate it for what it is; then you have really dealt with it’. Or, as Jesus graphically expressed it, we must gouge out our offending eye and cut off our offending hand or foot. That is, if temptation comes to us through what we see, handle or visit, then we must be ruthless in not looking, not touching, not going, and so in controlling the very approaches of sin. Positively, we are to set our minds on the things the Spirit desires (5), set our hearts on things above, and occupy our thoughts with what is noble, right, pure and lovely. In this way ‘mortification’ (putting evil to death) and ‘aspiration’ (hungering and thirsting for what is good) are counterparts. Both verbs (verse 5, ‘have their minds set’, and verse 13, ‘put to death’) are in the present tense, for they describe attitudes and activities which should be continuous, involving taking up the cross every day and setting our minds on the things of the Spirit every day.

Third, why should we practise mortification? It sounds an unpleasant, disagreeable, austere and even painful business. It runs counter to our natural tendency to soft and lazy self-indulgence. If we are to engage in it, we shall need strong motives. One is, as we have seen, that we have an obligation (12) to the indwelling Spirit of life. Another, on which Paul now insists, is that the death of mortification is the only road to life. Verse 13 contains the most marvellous promise, which is expressed in the single Greek verb zēsesthe, you will live. Paul is not now contradicting himself. Having called eternal life a free and undeserved gift (6:23), he is not now making it a reward for self-denial. Nor by ‘life’ does he seem to be referring to the life of the world to come. He seems to be referring to the life of God’s children, who are led by his Spirit and assured of his fatherly love, to which he comes in the next verses (14ff.). This rich, abundant, satisfying life, he is saying, can be enjoyed only by those who put their misdeeds to death. Even the pain of mortification is worthwhile if it opens the door to fullness of life.

This is one of several ways in which the radical principle of ‘life through death’ lies at the heart of the gospel. According to Romans 6 it is only by dying with Christ to sin, its penalty thereby paid, that we rise to a new life of forgiveness and freedom. According to Romans 8 it is only by putting our evil deeds to death that we experience the full life of God’s children. So we need to redefine both life and death. What the world calls life (a desirable self-indulgence) leads to alienation from God which in reality is death, whereas the putting to death of all perceived evil within us, which the world sees as an undesirable self-denial, is in reality the way to authentic life.

d. The witness of the Spirit (8:14–17)

What is immediately noteworthy about this paragraph is that in each of its four verses God’s people are designated his children or ‘sons’ (which of course includes ‘daughters’), and that in each this privileged status is related to the work of the Holy Spirit. Only in verse 16 is it specifically said that the Spirit testifies . . . that we are God’s children. Yet the whole paragraph concerns the witness he bears us, that is, the assurance he gives us. The question is: precisely how does the Spirit bear witness? Paul assembles four pieces of evidence. First, the Spirit leads us into holiness (verse 14 being linked to verse 13 by the conjunction for). Second, in our relationship to God he replaces fear with freedom (15a). Third, in our prayers he prompts us to call God ‘Father’ (15b–16). Fourth, he is the firstfruits of our heavenly inheritance (17, 23). Thus radical holiness, fearless freedom, filial prayerfulness and the hope of glory are four characteristics of the children of God who are indwelt and led by the Spirit of God. It is by these evidences that he witnesses to us that we are God’s children.

First, the Spirit leads us into holiness (14). It is somewhat artificial to begin a new subsection at verse 14, as we have done, since the topic is still the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit. Yet verse 14 clarifies verse 13 (for) by changing the imagery. Those who through the Spirit put the body’s misdeeds to death (13b) are now called those who are led by the Spirit (14a), while those who have entered into fullness of life (13c) are now called children of God (14b). Both clarifications are important.

To begin with, the kind of ‘leading’ by the Spirit which is the characteristic experience of God’s children is evidently more specific than it sounds. For it consists of, or at least includes as one of its most substantial features, the prompting and strengthening which enable them to put to death the body’s misdeeds. ‘The daily, hourly putting to death of the schemings and enterprises of the sinful flesh by means of the Spirit is a matter of being led, directed, impelled, controlled by the Spirit.’

Other commentators describe God’s children as ‘driven’ by the Spirit. For example, Godet writes that there is here ‘something like a notion of holy violence; the Spirit drags the man [sc. the person] where the flesh would fain not go’. Professor Käsemann also speaks of being ‘driven by the Spirit’, and interprets it of charismatic ‘enthusiasts’ who are ‘carried away’ by the Spirit. Professor Dunn follows him, claiming that ‘the most natural sense’ is that ‘of being constrained by a compelling force, of surrendering to an overmastering compulsion’. Yet the verb agō, although indeed it has different shades of meaning, does not, either necessarily or normally, imply the use of force.

The interpretation of this verb, however, is not just a semantic question. Dr Lloyd-Jones rightly enters a theological caveat at this point, relating to the nature and operation of the Holy Spirit. ‘There is no violence in Christianity,’ he writes. ‘What the Spirit does is to enlighten and persuade.’ Because he is a gentle, sensitive Spirit, he can easily be ‘grieved’. ‘The Holy Spirit never browbeats us . . . The impulse can be very strong, but there is no “driving”, there is no compulsion.’

Next, if to be ‘led by the Spirit of God’ (14a) is an elaboration of to ‘put to death the misdeeds of the body’ by the activity of the Spirit (13b), then the statement that you are the children of God (14b) expands the promise ‘you will live’ (13c). The new, rich, full life, which is enjoyed by those who put their misdeeds to death, is precisely the experience of being God’s children. It is evident then that the popular notion of ‘the universal fatherhood of God’ is not true. To be sure, all human beings are God’s ‘offspring’ by creation, but we become his reconciled ‘children’ only by adoption or new birth. Just as it is only those who are indwelt by the Spirit who belong to Christ (9), so it is only those who are led by the Spirit who are the sons and daughters of God (14). As such we are granted a specially close, personal, loving relationship with our heavenly Father, immediate and bold access to him in prayer, membership of his worldwide family, and the privilege of being his heirs, to which Paul will come in verse 17. He now enlarges on some of these privileges.

Second, the Spirit replaces fear with freedom in our relationship to God (15). Paul attributes this to the nature of the Spirit we received (an aorist, alluding to our conversion): The Spirit you received does not make you slaves, so that you live in fear again; rather, the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship. F. F. Bruce reminds us that we must interpret the implications of our adoption in terms not of our contemporary culture but of the Graeco-Roman culture of Paul’s day. He writes:

The term ‘adoption’ 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 not in the smallest degree 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.

Both here in verse 15 and in Galatians 4:1ff. Paul uses the imagery of slavery and freedom as a way of contrasting the two eras, the old age and the new, and so our pre- and post-conversion situation. The slavery of the old age led to fear, especially of God as our judge; the freedom of the new age gives us boldness to approach God as our Father. So everything has changed. It is true that we are still slaves of Christ (1:1), of God (6:22) and of righteousness (6:18f.), but these slaveries, far from being incompatible with freedom, are its essence. Freedom, not fear, now rules our lives.

The punctuation of the end of verse 15 and of verse 16 is disputed. Paul sets out three truths, namely that we received the Spirit (15a), that we cry, ‘Abba, Father’ (15b) and that the Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children (16). The uncertainty is how these three truths relate to one another, and in particular whether our ‘Abba, Father’ cry should be attached to the clause preceding or following it. The difference is not great. In the first rendering the ‘Abba, Father’ cry is the result of our receiving the Spirit of adoption; in the second it is the explanation of the Spirit’s inward witness. Either way, the gift of the Spirit, the cry and the witness belong together. But on balance I prefer the second interpretation, since then Paul is seen to move on from our relationship and attitude to God in general (not slavery but sonship, not fear but freedom) to the particular expression of it when we pray, from the nature of the Spirit we received to the witness of the Spirit in our prayers.

Third, the Spirit prompts us in our prayers to call God ‘Father’. The preservation side by side of the Aramaic (abba) and Greek (patēr) words for ‘father’, which some commentators since Augustine have seen as a symbol of the inclusion of Jews and Gentiles in God’s family, seems to go back to Jesus’ agony in the garden of Gethsemane, when he is recorded as having prayed ‘Abba, Father’. Joachim Jeremias’s researches into the prayer literature of ancient Judaism convinced him that Jesus’ use of this colloquial and familiar term of address to God was unique.

Abba was an everyday word, a homely family-word. No Jew would have dared to address God in this manner. Jesus did it always, in all his prayers which are handed down to us, with one single exception, the cry from the cross.

Although some scholars, both Jewish and Christian, are now suggesting that Jeremias’s case was overstated and needs to be modified, his main argument stands. Furthermore, Jesus told his disciples to pray ‘Our Father’, and thus authorized them to use in their address to God the very same intimate term which he used. ‘Jewish usage shows how this Father–child relationship to God far surpasses any possibilities of intimacy assumed in Judaism, introducing indeed something which is wholly new.’

Some maintain that the Greek verb for we cry (krazō) is such a strong one that it expresses a loud, spontaneous, emotional outburst. Certainly it was used many times in the Gospels for the shouts of demons when confronted by Jesus, and it can be translated ‘cry out, scream, shriek’ (BAGD). But it can equally well be rendered ‘call’ or ‘cry’, and so refer either to a liturgical acclamation in public worship or to a calling upon God in private devotion. In this case ‘Paul finds the particularity of krazein, not in enthusiasm or ecstasy, but in childlike and joyous assurance as contrasted with the attitude of the servant.’

In such prayers to the Father we experience the inward witness of the Holy Spirit. For when we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’, taking on our lips the very words which Jesus used, the Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children (15b–16). The words are ours, but the witness is his. How is his witness borne, then, and what is implied by the prefix syn in the verb symmartyreō? Normally syn is translated ‘together with’, in which case there would be two witnesses here, the Holy Spirit confirming and endorsing our own spirit’s consciousness of God’s fatherhood. This would be readily understandable, since the Old Testament required two witnesses to establish a testimony. On the other hand, is it really possible in experience to distinguish between the Holy Spirit and our human spirit? More important, would not these two witnesses be inappropriately matched? Surely ‘we cannot stand alongside the Holy Spirit and give testimony’? For ‘what standing has our spirit in this matter? Of itself it surely has no right at all to testify to our being children of God.’ In this case the prefix syn is simply intensive, and Paul meant that the Holy Spirit bears a strong inward witness to our spirit that we are God’s children.

It is natural to associate this experience with what Paul has written earlier about a similar inward ministry of the Holy Spirit. According to 5:5 God through the Holy Spirit ‘has . . . poured out [his love] into our hearts’. According to 8:16 the Holy Spirit testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children. Each verse gives us an example of the Holy Spirit’s ministry of inward assurance, as he convinces us of the reality of God’s love on the one hand and of God’s fatherhood on the other. Indeed, it would be hard to separate these, since God’s love has been conspicuously lavished upon us in making us his children. Although we have no freedom to limit God’s activity in any way, it seems from Christian biographies that God gives these experiences to his people chiefly when they pray, whether in public or in private.

Fourth, the Spirit is the firstfruits of our inheritance (17, 23). Paul cannot leave this topic of our being God’s children without pointing out its implication for the future. Now if we are children, then we are heirs as well – heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ (17a). At first sight this seems to refer to that heavenly inheritance, which ‘can never perish, spoil or fade’, which God is keeping in heaven for us. It is possible, however, that the inheritance Paul has in mind is not something God intends to bestow on us but God himself. Indeed, ‘it is difficult to suppress the richer and deeper thought that God himself is the inheritance of his children’.

This idea was familiar to Israel in Old Testament days. The Levites, for example, knew that they had been given no inheritance among their brothers because the Lord himself was their inheritance. And godly individual Israelites could confidently affirm that God was their portion. For example, ‘Whom have I in heaven but you? And earth has nothing I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion for ever.’ Moreover, the day is coming when God will be ‘all in all’, or ‘everything to every one’ (rsv). As for the further astonishing statement that God’s heirs are also co-heirs with Christ, we recall how Jesus himself had prayed that his own might be with him, and might see his glory and share his love. And although it is still future, our inheritance is certain, since the Holy Spirit is himself its firstfruits (23), guaranteeing that the harvest will follow in due course. Thus the same indwelling Spirit who assures us that we are God’s children also assures us that we are his heirs.

There is a qualification, however: if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory (17b). The Bible lays a strong emphasis on the principle that suffering is the path to glory. It was so for the Messiah (‘Did not the Messiah have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?’). It is so for the messianic community also (5:2f.). Peter teaches this as clearly as Paul: ‘rejoice inasmuch as you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when his glory is revealed.’ For the essence of discipleship is union with Christ, and this means identification with him in both his sufferings and his glory.

I do not feel able to leave these verses without referring to an interpretation of them which Dr Martyn Lloyd-Jones has set out. He devoted four chapters to the expression ‘you received the Spirit of adoption’ (15) and eight more to ‘the witness of the Spirit’ (16). Following Thomas Goodwin and other Puritans, he understood the former as ‘a very special form or type of assurance’, more emotional than intellectual, given subsequent to conversion though not essential for salvation, and conveying a profound feeling of security in our Father’s love. Similarly, he interpreted the witness of the Spirit (which he identified with the ‘baptism’ and the ‘sealing’ of the Spirit) as a distinctive and overwhelming experience which confers ‘an absolute assurance’. ‘This is the highest form of assurance possible; there is nothing beyond it.’ Although ‘it is wrong to standardize the experience’, since it comes with many variations of intensity and duration, yet it is a direct and sovereign work of the Holy Spirit, unpredictable, uncontrollable and unforgettable. It brings a heightened love for God, an unspeakable joy, and an uninhibited boldness in witness. Dr Lloyd-Jones went on to defend his argument by appealing to an impressive array of historical testimonies. Despite the diversity of their church backgrounds, they manifest ‘a strange and curious unanimity’.

I have no wish whatever to call in question the authenticity of the experiences described. Nor do I doubt that many Christian people continue to be granted similar profound encounters with God today. Nor is there any problem in affirming that the ministry of the Spirit of adoption (15) and the inner witness of the Spirit (16) are designed to bring us assurance. My anxiety is whether the biblical texts have been rightly interpreted. I have the uneasy feeling that it is the experiences which have determined the exposition. For the natural reading of Romans 8:14–17 is surely that all believers are ‘led by the Spirit’ (14), have received a Spirit who brought about their adoption (15), and cry ‘Abba, Father’ as the Spirit himself bears witness to them that they are God’s children (16) and therefore also his heirs (17). There is no indication in these four verses that a special, distinctive or overwhelming experience is in mind, which needs to be sought by all although it is given only to some. On the contrary, the whole paragraph appears to be descriptive of what is, or should be, common to all believers. Though doubtless in differing degrees of intensity, all who have the Spirit’s indwelling (9) are given the Spirit’s witness too (15–16).

Looking back now over the first half of Romans 8, we have seen something of the multiple ministries of the Holy Spirit. He has liberated us from the bondage of the law (2), while at the same time he empowers us to fulfil its just requirement (4). We now live each day according to the Spirit and set our minds on his desires (5). He lives in us (9), gives life to our spirits (10), and will one day give life to our bodies too (11). His indwelling obliges us to live his way (12), and his power enables us to put to death our body’s misdeeds (13). He leads us as God’s children (14) and bears witness to our spirit that this is what we are (15–16). He himself is also the foretaste of our inheritance in glory (17, 23). It is his indwelling which makes the fundamental difference between Romans 7 and Romans 8.

2. The glory of God’s children (8:18–27)

Paul now moves on from the present ministry of God’s Spirit to the future glory of God’s children, of which indeed the Holy Spirit is the firstfruits (23). This development was clearly prompted by his reference to our sharing in the sufferings and glory of Christ (17). For ‘suffering and glory’ is the theme throughout this section, first the sufferings and glory of God’s creation (19–22) and then the sufferings and glory of God’s children (23–27). Four general, introductory points about them need to be made.

First, the sufferings and the glory belong inseparably together. They did in the experience of Christ; they do also in the experience of his people (17). It is only after we ‘have suffered a little while’ that we will enter God’s ‘eternal glory in Christ’, to which he has called us. So the sufferings and the glory are welded; they cannot be broken apart.

Second, the sufferings and the glory characterize the two ages. The contrast between this age and the age to come, and so between the present and the future, between the already and the not yet, is neatly summed up in the two terms pathēmata (sufferings) and doxa (glory). And the ‘sufferings’ include not only the opposition of the world, but all our human frailty as well, both physical and moral, which is due to our provisional, half-saved condition. The ‘glory’, however, is the unutterable splendour of God, eternal, immortal and incorruptible. One day it will be revealed in us, because we will share in it and be changed by it. It is also ‘in store for us’ (reb), although the precise nature of ‘what we will be has not yet been made known’.

Third, the sufferings and the glory cannot be compared. I consider, writes Paul, expressing ‘a firm conviction reached by rational thought on the basis of the gospel’, that our present sufferings, or literally ‘the sufferings of the now time’, of this continuing age, painful though they are (as Paul knows well from experience), are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us (18). ‘Suffering’ and ‘glory’ are inseparable, since suffering is the way to glory (see verse 17), but they are not comparable. They need to be contrasted, not compared. In an earlier letter Paul has evaluated them in terms of their ‘weight’. Our present troubles, he declared, are ‘light and momentary’, but the glory to come is ‘eternal’ and ‘far outweighs them all’. The magnificence of God’s revealed glory will greatly surpass the unpleasantness of our sufferings.

Fourth, the sufferings and the glory concern both God’s creation and God’s children. Paul now writes from a cosmic perspective. The sufferings and glory of the old creation (the material order) and of the new (the people of God) are integrally related to each other. Both creations are suffering and groaning now; both are going to be set free together. As nature shared in the curse, and now shares in the pain, so it will also share in the glory. Hence the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed (19). The word for ‘eager expectation’ is apokaradokia, which is derived from kara, the head. It means ‘to wait with the head raised, and the eye fixed on that point of the horizon from which the expected object is to come’. It depicts somebody standing ‘on tiptoe’ (jbp) or ‘stretching the neck, craning forward’ in order to be able to see. And what the creation is looking for is the revelation of God’s children, that is, the disclosure of their identity on the one hand and their investiture with glory on the other. This will be the signal for the renewal of the whole creation.

But what is meant by the creation (hē ktisis), an expression which occurs four times in verses 19–22, once in each verse? Paul’s focus is on the earth, as the stage on which the drama of fall and redemption is being played.

a. The sufferings and glory of God’s creation (8:20–22)

Paul personifies ‘the creation’, much as we often personify ‘nature’. Such personifications are quite common in the Old Testament. For example, the heavens, earth and sea, with all their contents, the fields, trees of the forest, rivers and mountains are all summoned to rejoice and to sing to the Lord.

The apostle now makes three statements about the creation, which relate respectively to its past, future and present.

First, the creation was subjected to frustration (20a). This reference to the past must surely be to the judgment of God, which fell on the natural order following Adam’s disobedience. The ground was cursed because of him. In consequence, it would ‘produce thorns and thistles’, so that Adam and his descendants would extract food from it only by ‘painful toil’ and sweat, until death claimed them and they returned to the dust from which they had been taken. Paul does not refer to these details. Instead, he sums up the result of God’s curse by the one word mataiotēs, frustration. It means ‘emptiness, futility, purposelessness, transitoriness’ (BAGD). The basic idea is emptiness, whether of purpose or of result. It is the word chosen by the translators of the Greek Septuagint for ‘Meaningless! Meaningless! . . . Utterly meaningless!’ It expresses the existential absurdity of a life lived ‘under the sun’, imprisoned in time and space, with no ultimate reference point to either God or eternity.

The apostle adds that the creation’s subjection to frustration was not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope (20b). These last two words are enough to prove that the person in mind, whose will subjected the creation to futility, was neither Satan nor Adam, as a few commentators have suggested. Only God, being both Judge and Saviour, held any hope for the world he cursed.

Second, the creation itself will be liberated (21a). The word ‘hope’ is the pivot on which Paul turns from the past to the future of creation. Its subjection to frustration will not last for ever, God has promised. One day it will experience a new beginning, which Paul terms a ‘liberation’, with both a negative and a positive aspect.

Negatively, creation will be liberated from its bondage to decay (21b). Phthora (decay) seems to indicate not only that the universe is running down (as we would say), but that nature is also enslaved, locked into an unending cycle, so that conception, birth and growth are relentlessly followed by decline, decay, death and decomposition. In addition, there may be a passing reference to predation and pain, especially the latter which is mentioned in the next verse. So futility, bondage, decay and pain are the words the apostle uses to indicate that creation is out of joint because it is under judgment. It still works, for the mechanisms of nature are fine-tuned and delicately balanced. And much of it is breathtakingly beautiful, revealing the Creator’s hand. But it is also in bondage to disintegration and frustration. In the end, however, it will be ‘freed from the shackles of mortality’ (reb).

Positively, creation will be liberated . . . into the freedom and glory of the children of God (21c). These nouns correspond to those of the previous clause, for nature will be brought out of bondage into freedom, out of decay into glory; that is, out of corruption into incorruption. Indeed, God’s creation will share in the glory of God’s children, which is itself the glory of Christ (see 17–18).

This expectation that nature itself will be renewed is integral to the Old Testament prophetic vision of the messianic age, especially in the Psalms and Isaiah. Vivid images are used to express Israel’s faith that the earth and the heavens will be changed like clothing; that God ‘will create new heavens and a new earth’, including a new Jerusalem; that the desert will blossom like the crocus, and so display the glory of the Lord; that wild and domestic animals will co-exist in peace, and that even the most ferocious and poisonous creatures ‘will neither harm nor destroy’ throughout God’s new world.

The New Testament writers do not take up the details of this poetic imagery. But Jesus himself spoke of the ‘new birth’ (palingenesia) of the world at his coming; Peter of the ‘restoration’ (apokatastasis) of all things; Paul here of the liberation, and elsewhere of the reconciliation, of all things; and John of the new heaven and earth, in which God will dwell with his people, and from which all separation, sorrow, pain and death will have been eliminated. It would not be wise for us to speculate, let alone be dogmatic, about how the biblical and the scientific accounts of reality correspond or harmonize, either in the present or in the future. The general promise of the renovation and transformation of nature is plain, including the eradication of all harmful elements and their replacement by righteousness, peace, harmony, joy and security. But we should be cautious in pressing the details. The future glory is beyond our imagination. What we do know is that God’s material creation will be redeemed and glorified, because God’s children will be redeemed and glorified.

Third, the whole creation has been groaning . . . right up to the present time (22). So far the apostle has told us that the creation ‘was subjected to frustration’ in the past (20) and ‘will be liberated’ in the future (21). Now he adds that meanwhile, in the present, even while it is eagerly awaiting the final revelation (19), the creation is groaning in pain. Its groans are not meaningless, however, or symptoms of despair. On the contrary, they are like the pains of childbirth, for they provide assurance of the coming emergence of a new order. In Jewish apocalyptic literature Israel’s current sufferings were frequently called ‘the woes of the Messiah’ or ‘the birthpangs of the messianic age’. That is, they were seen as the painful introduction to, indeed the herald of, the victorious arrival of the Messiah. Jesus himself used the same expression in his own teaching about the end times. He spoke of false teachers, wars, famines and earthquakes as ‘the beginning of birth-pains’, that is, preliminary signs of his coming.

Verse 22 actually brings together the past, present and future. For not only is the creation groaning now, but it is groaning ‘right up to the present time’. And since its groans are labour pains, they look forward to the coming new order. Although we must be careful not to impose modern scientific categories on Paul, we must hold on to his combination of present sufferings and future glory. Each verse expresses it. The creation’s subjection to frustration was in hope (20). The bondage to decay will give place to freedom and glory (21). The pains of labour will be followed by the joys of birth (22). There is therefore going to be both continuity and discontinuity in the regeneration of the world, as in the resurrection of the body. The universe is not going to be destroyed, but rather liberated, transformed and suffused with the glory of God.

b. The sufferings and glory of God’s children (8:23–27)

Verses 22–23 draw an important parallel between God’s creation and God’s children. Verse 22 speaks of the whole creation groaning; verse 23 begins: Not only so, but we ourselves . . . groan inwardly. Even we, who are no longer in Adam but in Christ, we who no longer live according to the flesh but have the firstfruits of the Spirit, we in whom God’s new creation has already begun, even we continue to groan inside ourselves as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies (23). This is our Christian dilemma. Caught in the tension between what God has established (by giving us his Spirit) and what he will accomplish (in our final adoption and redemption), we groan with discomfort and longing. The indwelling Spirit gives us joy, and the coming glory gives us hope (e.g. 5:2), but the interim suspense gives us pain.

Paul now highlights different aspects of our half-saved condition by five affirmations.

First, we . . . have the firstfruits of the Spirit (23a). Aparchē, the firstfruits, was both the beginning of the harvest and the guarantee that the full harvest would follow in due time. Perhaps Paul had in mind that the Feast of Weeks, which celebrated the reaping of the firstfruits, was the very festival (called in Greek ‘Pentecost’) on which the Spirit had been given. Replacing this agricultural metaphor with a commercial one, Paul also described the gift of the Spirit as God’s arrabōn, the ‘first instalment, deposit, down payment, pledge’ (BAGD), which guaranteed the future completion of the purchase. Although we have not yet received our final adoption or redemption, we have already received the Spirit as both foretaste and promise of these blessings.

Second, we . . . groan inwardly (23b). The connection between the Spirit’s indwelling and our groaning should not surprise us. For the very presence of the Spirit (being only the firstfruits) is a constant reminder of the incompleteness of our salvation, as we share with the creation in the frustration, the bondage to decay and the pain. So one reason for our groaning is our physical frailty and mortality. Paul expresses this elsewhere: ‘Meanwhile we groan, longing to be clothed instead with our heavenly dwelling [meaning probably our resurrection body] . . . For while we are in this tent [our temporary, flimsy, material body], we groan and are burdened.’ But it is not only our fragile body (sōma) which makes us groan; it is also our fallen nature (sarx), which hinders us from behaving as we should, and would altogether prevent us from it, were it not for the indwelling Spirit (7:17, 20). We long, therefore, for our sarx to be destroyed and for our sōma to be transformed. Our groans express both present pain and future longing. Some Christians, however, grin too much (they seem to have no place in their theology for pain) and groan too little.

Third, we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies (23c). Just as the groaning creation waits eagerly for God’s children to be revealed (19), so we groaning Christians wait eagerly for our adoption, even our bodily redemption. We have, of course, already been adopted by God (15), and the Spirit assures us that we are his children (16). Yet there is an even deeper and richer child–Father relationship to come when we are fully ‘revealed’ as his children (19) and ‘conformed to the image of his Son’ (29). Again, we have already been redeemed, but not yet our bodies. Already our spirits are alive (10), but one day the Spirit will also give life to our bodies (11). More than that, our bodies will be changed by Christ to be ‘like his glorious body’. ‘Bondage to decay’ will be replaced by ‘freedom and glory’ (21).

Fourth, in this hope we were saved (24a). We were saved (esōthēmen) is an aorist tense. It bears witness to our decisive past liberation from the guilt and bondage of our sins, and from the just judgment of God upon them. Yet we remain only half saved. For we have not yet been saved from the outpouring of God’s wrath in the day of judgment (5:9), nor have the final traces of sin in our human personality been eradicated. Not yet has our sarx been obliterated; not yet has our sōma been redeemed. So we were saved in . . . hope of our total liberation (24a), as the creation was subjected to frustration ‘in hope’ of being set free from it (20). This double hope looks to the future and to things which, being future, are so far unseen. For hope that is seen, having been realized in our experience, is no hope at all. Who hopes for what they already have? (24b). Instead, we hope for what we do not yet have (25a).

Fifth, we wait for it patiently (25b), that is, for the fulfilment of our hope. For we are confident in God’s promises that the firstfruits will be followed by the harvest, bondage by freedom, decay by incorruption, and labour pains by the birth of the new world. This whole section is a notable example of what it means to be living ‘in between times’, between present difficulty and future destiny, between the already and the not yet, between sufferings and glory. In this hope we were saved brings them together. And in this tension the correct Christian posture is that of waiting, waiting eagerly (23; cf. 19) with keen expectation, and waiting patiently (25), steadfast in the endurance of our trials (hypomonē). The same verb occurs in both verses (apekdechomai, 23 and 25, as also in 19), and includes in itself the note of ‘eagerness’, whereas ‘patience’ or ‘perseverance’ is added to it in verse 25. The combination is significant. We are to wait neither so eagerly that we lose our patience, nor so patiently that we lose our expectation, but eagerly and patiently together.

Yet it is hard to keep this balance. Some Christians overemphasize the call to patience. They lack enthusiasm and lapse into lethargy, apathy and pessimism. They have forgotten God’s promises, and are guilty of unbelief. Others grow impatient of waiting. They are so carried away with enthusiasm that they almost try to force God’s hand. They are determined to experience now even what is not available yet. Understandably anxious to emerge out of the painful present of suffering and groaning, they talk as if the resurrection had already taken place, and as if the body should no longer be subject to weakness, disease, pain and decay. Yet such impatience is a form of presumption. It is to rebel against the God of history, who has indeed acted conclusively for our salvation, and who will most assuredly complete (when Christ comes) what he has begun, but who refuses to be pushed into changing his planned timetable just because we do not enjoy having to go on waiting and groaning. God give us a patient eagerness and an eager patience as we wait for his promises to be fulfilled!

In this life of expectancy Paul now brings us another encouragement. It again concerns the ministry of the Holy Spirit. This ministry he has so far set out in relation first to the law which he enables us to fulfil (2–8); second, to our fallen nature which he subdues (9–13); third, to our adoption into God’s family, of which he assures us (14–17); and fourth, to our final inheritance of which he is the guarantee and foretaste (18–23). Now, fifth, he writes of the Holy Spirit in relation to our prayers (26–27). Indeed, true Christian prayer is impossible without the Holy Spirit. It is he who causes us to cry ‘Abba, Father’ (15) when we pray. Prayer is in itself an essentially trinitarian exercise. It is access to the Father through the Son and by the Spirit. The inspiration of the Spirit is just as necessary for our prayers as the mediation of the Son. We can approach the Father only through the Son and only by the Spirit.

In the same way, Paul begins (26), probably meaning that as our Christian hope sustains us, so does the Holy Spirit. In general, the Spirit helps us in our weakness (26a), that is, in the ambiguity and frailty of our ‘already–not yet’ existence. In particular, he helps our frailty in prayer. In this sphere our weakness is our ignorance: We do not know what we ought to pray for (26b). But he knows what we do not know. In consequence, the Spirit himself intercedes for us (26c).

Moreover, the Holy Spirit’s intercession is said to be through wordless groans (26d). The point Paul is making is not that the groans cannot be put into words, but that in fact they are not. They are unexpressed, rather than inexpressible. In the context, these wordless groans must surely be related to the groans both of God’s creation (22) and of God’s children (23) for final redemption and the consummation of all things. Why do we not know what to pray for? Perhaps because we are unsure whether to pray for deliverance from our sufferings or for strength to endure them. Also, since we do not know what we will be, or when or how, we are in no position to make precise requests. So the Spirit intercedes for us, and does so with wordless groans.

It is truly amazing that, having written of the groaning creation and of the groaning church, Paul should now write of the groaning Spirit. Indeed, some commentators have resisted this, declaring that the Spirit never groans, and that Paul means only that he causes us to groan. Yet Paul’s language is clear. The Spirit intercedes for us in unspoken groanings. That is, his intercession is accompanied by them and expressed in them. True, God’s creation and God’s children groan because of their present state of imperfection, and there is nothing imperfect about the Holy Spirit. It must be, therefore, that the Holy Spirit identifies with our groans, with the pain of the world and the church, and shares in the longing for the final freedom of both. We and he groan together.

These groans can hardly be glossolalia, since those ‘tongues’ or languages were expressed in words which some could understand and interpret. Here Paul is referring rather to inarticulate groans. Although wordless, however, they are not meaningless. For God the Father, who searches our hearts – a uniquely divine activity – knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God’s people in accordance with the will of God (27).

So three persons are involved in our praying. First, we ourselves in our weakness do not know what to pray for. Second, the indwelling Spirit helps us by interceding for us and through us, with wordless groans but according to God’s will. Third, God the Father, who both searches our hearts and knows the Spirit’s mind, hears and answers accordingly. Of these three, however, it is the Spirit who is emphasized. Paul makes three statements about him. First, ‘the Spirit helps us’ (because of our weakly, half-saved situation); second, ‘the Spirit . . . intercedes for us’ (because of our ignorance of what to pray for); and third, ‘the Spirit intercedes . . . in accordance with the will of God’ (and therefore God listens and responds).

3. The steadfastness of God’s love (8:28–39)

In the last twelve verses of Romans 8 the apostle soars to sublime heights unequalled elsewhere in the New Testament. Having described the chief privileges of justified believers – peace with God (5:1–11), union with Christ (5:12 – 6:23), freedom from the law (7:1–25) and life in the Spirit (8:1–27) – his great Spirit-directed mind now sweeps over the whole plan and purpose of God from a past eternity to an eternity still to come, from the divine foreknowledge and predestination to the divine love from which absolutely nothing will ever be able to separate us.

To be sure, at present we experience sufferings and groans, but we are sustained in the midst of them by the hope of glory. So far it is only a ‘hope’, because it is still future, unseen and unrealized, but it is not therefore uncertain. On the contrary, our Christian hope is solidly grounded on the unwavering love of God. So the point of Paul’s climax is the eternal security of God’s people, on account of the eternal unchangeability of God’s purpose, which is itself due to the eternal steadfastness of God’s love.

The apostle declares these tremendous truths three times over, although from three different perspectives. He begins with five unshakeable convictions (28) about God working all things together for the good of his people. He continues with five undeniable affirmations (29–30) regarding the successive stages of God’s saving purpose from eternity to eternity. And he concludes with five unanswerable questions (31–39), in which he challenges anybody to contradict the convictions and the affirmations which he has just expressed.

a. Five unshakeable convictions (8:28)

Romans 8:28 is surely one of the best-known texts in the Bible. On it believers of every age and place have stayed their minds. It has been likened to a pillow on which to rest our weary heads.

We note that verse 28 begins with the statement we know. Verse 22 began likewise. So here are two assertions of Christian knowledge, one about the groaning creation and the other about God’s providential care. Yet there are many other things which we do not know. For example, ‘we do not know what we ought to pray for’ (26). In fact, we are caught in a continuous tension between what we know and what we do not know. It is just as foolish to claim to know what we do not know as it is to admit not to know what we do know. In those areas in which God has not plainly revealed his mind, the right attitude for us to adopt is that of Christian agnosticism. But in verse 28 Paul lists five truths about God’s providence which we know.

First, we know that God works, or is at work, in our lives. An early copyist evidently felt the need to make this explicit by adding ‘God’ as the subject of the verb. But the manuscript support for this reading, although ‘both ancient and noteworthy’, is insufficient to secure its acceptance. The addition is also unnecessary, for the order of words permits the translation, ‘we know that for those who love God he is working’. He is ceaselessly, energetically and purposefully active on their behalf.

Second, God is at work for the good of his people. Being himself wholly good, his works are all expressions of his goodness and are calculated to advance his people’s good. Moreover, the ‘good’ which is the goal of all his providential dealings with us is our ultimate well-being, namely our final salvation. Verses 29–30 make this plain.

Third, God works for our good in all things. This must include the sufferings of verse 17 and the groanings of verse 23. ‘Thus all that is negative in this life is seen to have a positive purpose in the execution of God’s eternal plan.’ Nothing is beyond the overruling, overriding scope of his providence.

Fourth, God works in all things for the good of those who love him. This is a necessary limitation. Paul is not expressing a general, superficial optimism that everything tends to everybody’s good in the end. No, if the ‘good’ which is God’s objective is our completed salvation, then those who benefit are his people who are described as those who love him. This is an unusual phrase for Paul, because his references in Romans to love are rather to God’s love for us (e.g. 5:5, 8; 8:35, 37, 39). Nevertheless, he does elsewhere refer to our love for God, and this is a common biblical concept, since the first and great commandment is that we love God with all our being.

Fifth, those who love God are also described as those who have been called according to his purpose. For ‘their love for him is a sign and token of his prior love for them’, which has found expression in his eternal purpose and his historical call. So God has a saving purpose, and is working in accordance with it. Life is not the random mess which it may sometimes appear.

These are the five truths about God which, Paul writes, we know. We do not always understand what God is doing, let alone welcome it. Nor are we told that he is at work for our comfort. But we know that in all things he is working towards our supreme good. And one of the reasons we know this is that we are given many examples of it in the Bible. For instance, this was Joseph’s conviction about his brothers’ cruelty in selling him into Egypt: ‘You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good . . . the saving of many lives.’ Similarly, Jeremiah wrote in God’s name a letter to the Jews in Babylonian exile after the catastrophic destruction of Jerusalem: ‘“I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”’ The same concurrence of human evil and divine plan had its most conspicuous display in the cross, which Peter attributed both to the wickedness of men and to ‘God’s deliberate plan and foreknowledge’.

b. Five undeniable affirmations (8:29–30)

In these two verses Paul explains what he meant in verse 28 by God’s ‘purpose’, according to which he has called us and is working everything together for our good. He traces God’s good and saving purpose through five stages from its beginning in his mind to its consummation in the coming glory. These stages he names foreknowledge, predestination, calling, justification and glorification.

First comes a reference to those God foreknew. Since the common meaning of ‘to foreknow’ is to know something beforehand, in advance of its happening, some commentators both ancient and modern have concluded that God foresees who will believe, and that this foreknowledge is the basis of his predestination. But this cannot be right, for at least two reasons. First, in this sense God foreknows everybody and everything, whereas Paul is referring to a particular group. Second, if God predestines people because they are going to believe, then the ground of their salvation is in themselves and their merit, instead of in him and his mercy, whereas Paul’s whole emphasis is on God’s free initiative of grace.

Other commentators have therefore reminded us that the Hebrew verb ‘to know’ expresses much more than mere intellectual cognition; it denotes a personal relationship of care and affection. Thus, when God ‘knows’ people, he watches over them, and when he ‘knew’ the children of Israel in the desert, what is meant is that he cared for them. Indeed, Israel was the only people out of all the families of the earth whom Yahweh had ‘known’, that is, loved, chosen and formed a covenant with. The meaning of ‘foreknowledge’ in the New Testament is similar. ‘God did not reject his people [Israel], whom he foreknew’, that is, whom he loved and chose (11:2). This fits in with Moses’ great statement: ‘The Lord did not set his affection on you and choose you because you were more numerous than other peoples . . . But it was because the Lord loved you.’ The only source of divine election and predestination is divine love.

Second, those God foreknew, or foreloved, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters (29). The verb predestined translates proorizō, which means to ‘decide upon beforehand’ (BAGD), as in Acts 4:28 (‘They did what your power and will had decided beforehand should happen’). Clearly, then, a decision is involved in the process of becoming a Christian, but it is God’s decision before it can be ours. This is not to deny that we ‘decided for Christ’, and freely, but to affirm that we did so only because he had first ‘decided for us’. This emphasis on God’s gracious, sovereign decision or choice is reinforced by the vocabulary with which it is associated. On the one hand, it is attributed to God’s ‘pleasure’, ‘will’, ‘plan’ and ‘purpose’, and on the other, it is traced back to ‘before the creation of the world’ or ‘before time began’.

Neither the Bible nor experience allows us to weaken this teaching. As for Scripture, not only throughout the Old Testament is Israel acknowledged as ‘the one nation on earth that God went out to redeem as a people for himself’, to be his special ‘treasured possession’, but throughout the New Testament it is recognized that human beings are by nature blind, deaf and dead, so that their conversion is impossible unless God gives them sight, hearing and life.

Our own experience confirms this. Dr J. I. Packer, in his fine essay Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God, points out that in fact all Christian people believe in God’s sovereignty in salvation, even if they deny it. ‘Two facts show this,’ he writes.

In the first place, you give God thanks for your conversion. Now why do you do that? Because you know in your heart that God was entirely responsible for it. You did not save yourself; he saved you . . . There is a second way in which you acknowledge that God is sovereign in salvation. You pray for the conversion of others . . . You ask God to work in them everything necessary for their salvation.

So our thanksgivings and our intercessions prove that we believe in divine sovereignty. ‘On our feet we may have arguments about it, but on our knees we are all agreed.’

Yet the mysteries remain. And as finite and fallen creatures we have no right to demand explanations from our infinite and perfect Creator. Nevertheless, he has thrown light on our problem in such a way as to contradict the chief objections which are raised and to show that the consequences of predestination are the opposite of what is popularly supposed. Here are five examples.

1. Predestination is said to lead to arrogance, since (it is alleged) God’s elect boast of their favoured status. But on the contrary, predestination excludes boasting. For it fills God’s people with astonishment that he should ever have had mercy on undeserving sinners like them. Humbled before the cross, they desire to live the rest of their lives only ‘to the praise of his glorious grace’ and to spend eternity worshipping the Lamb who was slain.

2. Predestination is said to lead to uncertainty, and to create in people a neurotic anxiety as to whether they are predestined and saved or not. But this is not so. If they are unbelievers, they are entirely unconcerned about their salvation, until and unless the Holy Spirit brings them under conviction of sin as a prelude to their conversion. If they are believers, however, even when passing through a period of doubt, they know that in the end their security lies only in the eternal, predestinating will of God. Nothing else can bring such assurance and comfort. As Luther wrote in his comment on verse 28, predestination ‘is a wonderfully sweet thing for those who have the Spirit’.

3. Predestination is said to lead to apathy. For if salvation is entirely God’s work and not ours, people argue, then all human responsibility before God has been undermined. But again this is not so. On the contrary, it is abundantly clear that the Bible’s emphasis on God’s sovereignty never diminishes our responsibility. Instead, the two lie side by side in an antinomy, which is an apparent contradiction between two truths. Unlike a paradox, an antinomy is

not deliberately manufactured; it is forced upon us by the facts themselves . . . We do not invent it, and we cannot explain it. Nor is there any way to get rid of it, save by falsifying the very facts that led us to it.

A good example is found in the teaching of Jesus, who declared both that ‘no one can come to me unless the Father . . . draws them’ and that ‘you refuse to come to me to have life’. Why do people not come to Jesus? Is it that they cannot? Or is it that they will not? The only answer which is compatible with his own teaching is, ‘Both, even though we cannot reconcile them.’

4. Predestination is said to lead to complacency, and to breed antinomians. For, if God has predestined us to eternal salvation, why should we not live as we please, without moral restraint, and in defiance of divine law? Paul has already answered this objection in chapter 6. Those whom God has chosen and called he has united to Christ in his death and resurrection. Having died to sin, they now live a new life to God. And elsewhere Paul writes that ‘he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight’. Indeed, he has predestined us to be conformed to the image of his Son (29).

5. Predestination is said to lead to narrow-mindedness, as the chosen people of God become absorbed only in themselves. The opposite is the case. The reason God called one man Abraham and his one family was not for their blessing only, but that through them all the families of the earth might be blessed. Similarly, the reason God chose his Servant, that shadowy figure in Isaiah whom we see partly fulfilled in Israel, but specially in Christ and his people, was not only to glorify Israel but to bring light and justice to the nations. Indeed these promises were a great stimulus to Paul (as they should be to us) when he courageously broadened his evangelistic vision to include the Gentiles. So God has made us his own people, not that we should be his favourites, but that we should be his witnesses, to ‘declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light’.

So the doctrine of divine predestination promotes humility, not arrogance; assurance, not apprehension; responsibility, not apathy; holiness, not complacency; and mission, not privilege. This is not to claim that there are no problems, but to indicate that they are more intellectual than pastoral.

Certainly the point Paul singles out for emphasis in verse 29 is pastoral. It concerns the two practical purposes of God’s predestination. The first is that we should be conformed to the image of his Son. In the simplest possible terms, God’s eternal purpose for his people is that we should become like Jesus. The transformation process begins here and now in our character and conduct, through the work of the Holy Spirit, but will be brought to completion only when Christ comes and we see him, and our bodies become like the body of his glory. The second purpose of God’s predestination is that, as a result of our conformity to the image of Christ, he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters, enjoying both the community of the family and the pre-eminence of the firstborn.

We now come to Paul’s third affirmation: those he predestined, he also called (30a). The call of God is the historical application of his eternal predestination. His call comes to people through the gospel, and it is when the gospel is preached to them with power, and they respond to it with the obedience of faith, that we know God has chosen them. So evangelism (the preaching of the gospel), far from being rendered superfluous by God’s predestination, is indispensable, because it is the very means God has ordained by which his call comes to his people and awakens their faith. Clearly, then, what Paul means by God’s call here is not the general gospel invitation but the divine summons which raises the spiritually dead to life. It is often termed God’s ‘effective’ or ‘effectual’ call. Those whom God thus calls (30) are the same as those ‘who have been called according to his purpose’ (28).

Fourth, those he called, he also justified (30b). God’s effective call enables those who hear it to believe, and those who believe are justified by faith. Since justification by faith has been an overarching topic of Paul’s earlier chapters, it is not necessary to repeat what has already been said, except perhaps to emphasize that justification is more than forgiveness or acquittal or even acceptance; it is a declaration that we sinners are now righteous in God’s sight, because he has conferred a righteous status on us, which is indeed the righteousness of Christ himself. It is ‘in Christ’, by virtue of our union with him, that we have been justified. He became sin with our sin, so that we might become righteous with his righteousness.

Fifth, those he justified, he also glorified (30c). Paul has already used the noun ‘glory’ several times. It is essentially the glory of God, the manifestation of his splendour, of which all sinners fall short (3:23), but which we rejoice in hope of recovering (5:2). Paul also promises both that if we share Christ’s sufferings we will share his glory (8:17) and that the creation itself will one day be brought into the freedom of the glory of God’s children (8:21). Now he uses the verb: those he justified, he also glorified. Our destiny is to be given new bodies in a new world, both of which will be transfigured with the glory of God.

Many students have noticed that the process of sanctification has been omitted in verse 30 between justification and glorification. Yet it is implicitly there, both in the reference to our being conformed to the image of Christ and as the necessary preliminary to our glorification. For ‘sanctification is glory begun; glory is sanctification consummated’. Moreover, so certain is this final stage that, although it is still future, Paul puts it into the same aorist tense, as if it were past, as he has used for the other four stages which are past. It is a so-called ‘prophetic past’ tense. James Denney writes that ‘the tense in the last word is amazing. It is the most daring anticipation of faith that even the New Testament contains.’

Here then is the apostle’s series of five undeniable affirmations. God is pictured as moving irresistibly from stage to stage; from an eternal foreknowledge and predestination, through a historical call and justification, to a final glorification of his people in a future eternity. It resembles a chain of five links, each of which is unbreakable.

c. Five unanswerable questions (8:31–39)

Paul introduces the last nine verses of this chapter with a concluding formula which he has already used three times (6:1, 15; 7:7): What, then, shall we say in response to these things? (31a). That is, in the light of his five convictions (28) and five affirmations (29–30), what is there left to say? The apostle’s answer to his own question is to ask five more questions to which there is no answer. He hurls them into space, as it were, in a spirit of bold defiance. He challenges anybody and everybody, in heaven, earth or hell, to answer them and to deny the truth which they contain. But there is no answer. For no-one and nothing can harm the people whom God has foreknown, predestined, called, justified and glorified.

If we are to understand the significance of these questions, it is essential to grasp why each remains unanswered. It is because of a truth which in each case is either contained in the question, or is attached to it by an ‘if’ clause. It is this truth, whether explicit or implicit, which renders the question unanswerable. The clearest example is the first.

Question 1: If God is for us, who can be against us? (31b).

If Paul had simply asked, ‘Who is against us?’ there would immediately have been a barrage of replies. For we have formidable enemies arrayed against us. What about the catalogue of hardships which he lists in verse 35; are they not against us? The unbelieving, persecuting world is opposed to us. Indwelling sin is a powerful adversary. Death is still an enemy, defeated but not yet destroyed. So is he ‘who holds the power of death – that is, the devil’, together with all the principalities and powers of darkness which are mentioned in verse 38. Indeed, the world, the flesh and the devil are together marshalled against us, and are much too strong for us.

But Paul does not ask this naïve question. The essence of his question is contained in the ‘if’ clause: If [rather, ‘since’] God is for us, who can be against us? Paul is not saying that the claim ‘God is for us’ can be made by everybody. In fact, perhaps the most terrible words which human ears could ever hear are those which God uttered many times in the Old Testament: ‘“I am against you,” declares the Lord.’ They occur most frequently in the prophetic oracles against the nations, for example, against Assyria, Babylon, Egypt, Tyre and Sidon, and Edom. More terrible still, they were sometimes spoken against Israel herself in her disobedience and idolatry, and specially against her false shepherds and false prophets.

But this is not the case in Romans 8:31. On the contrary, the situation Paul imagines is one in which ‘God is for us’, since he has foreknown, predestined, called, justified and glorified us. This being so, who can be against us? To that question there is no answer. All the powers of hell may set themselves together against us. But they can never win, since God is on our side.

Question 2: He 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? (32).

Again, suppose the apostle had asked the simple question: ‘Will God not graciously give us all things?’ In response, we might well have hesitated and given an equivocal answer. For we need many things, some of which are difficult and demanding. How then can we possibly be sure that God will supply all our needs?

But the way Paul phrases his question banishes these doubts. For he points us to the cross. The God concerning whom we are asking our question whether or not he will give us all things is the God who has already given us his Son. On the one hand, and negatively, he did not spare his own Son, a statement which surely echoes God’s word to Abraham: ‘you . . . have not withheld [lxx ‘spared’, as in Rom. 8:32] your son, your only son.’ On the other hand, and positively, God gave him up for us all. The same verb is used in the Gospels of Judas, the priests and Pilate who ‘handed Jesus over’ to death. Yet Octavius Winslow was correct to write: ‘Who delivered up Jesus to die? Not Judas, for money; not Pilate, for fear; not the Jews, for envy; – but the Father, for love!’

Here in 8:32, as earlier in 5:8–10, Paul argues from the greater to the lesser, namely that since God has already given us the supreme and costliest gift of his own Son, ‘how can he fail to lavish every other gift upon us?’ (reb). In giving his Son he gave everything. The cross is the guarantee of the continuing, unfailing generosity of God.

Question 3: Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies (33).

This question and the next (asking who will accuse us and who will condemn us) bring us in imagination into a court of law. Paul’s argument is that no prosecution can succeed, since God our judge has already justified us; and that we can never be condemned, since Jesus Christ our advocate has died for our sins, was raised from the dead, is seated at God’s right hand and is interceding for us.

So who will accuse us? Once again, if this question stood on its own, many voices would be raised in accusation. Our conscience accuses us. The devil never ceases to press charges against us, for his title diabolos means ‘slanderer’, and he is called ‘the accuser of our brothers and sisters’. In addition, we undoubtedly have human enemies who delight to point an accusing finger at us. But none of their allegations can be sustained. Why not? Because God has chosen us and because God has justified us. Therefore all accusations fall to the ground. They glance off us like arrows off a shield. The apostle is surely echoing the words of the Servant in Isaiah 50:8–9:

He who vindicates me is near.

Who then will bring charges against me?

Let us face each other!

Who is my accuser?

Let him confront me!

It is the Sovereign Lord who helps me.

Who will condemn me?

Question 4: Who then is the one who condemns? No one. 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 (34).

In answer to the opening question as to who will condemn us, there are without doubt many who are wanting to. Sometimes our own ‘heart’ condemns us. It certainly tries to. And so do our critics, our detractors, our enemies, yes, and all the demons of hell.

But their condemnations will all fail. Why? Because of Christ Jesus. Commentators differ as to whether the next clauses are questions or denials. But in every case the sense is the same, namely that Christ rescues us from condemnation, in particular by his death, resurrection, exaltation and intercession.

First, Christ Jesus . . . died – died for the very sins for which otherwise we would deservedly be condemned. But instead God ‘condemned sin’ (our sin) in the humanity of Jesus (8:3), and so Christ has redeemed us from the curse or condemnation of the law ‘by becoming a curse for us’. There is more than that, however, in the saving work of Christ. For, second, after death he was raised to life. It is not just that he rose, although this is affirmed in the New Testament, but that he was raised by the Father, who thus demonstrated his acceptance of the sacrifice of his Son as the only satisfactory basis for our justification (4:25). And now, third, the crucified and resurrected Christ is at the right hand of God, resting from his finished work, occupying the place of supreme honour, exercising his authority to save and waiting for his final triumph. Fourth, he is also interceding for us, for he is our heavenly advocate and high priest. His very presence at the Father’s right hand is evidence of his completed work of atonement, and his intercession means that he ‘continues . . . to secure for his people the benefits of his death’. With this Christ as our Saviour (who died, was raised, has been exalted and is interceding), we know that ‘there is now no condemnation’ for those who are united to him (8:1). We can therefore confidently challenge the universe, with all its inhabitants human and demonic: Who then is the one who condemns? There will never be any answer.

Question 5: Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? (35a).

‘We are climbing a grand staircase here’, and this fifth question is the top step. As we stand on it, Paul himself now does what we have been trying to do with his other questions. He first asks who will separate us from Christ’s love and then looks round for an answer. He brings forward a sample list of adversities and adversaries that might be thought of as coming between us and Christ’s love. He mentions seven possibilities (35b). He begins with trouble (thlipsis), hardship (stenochōria) and persecution (diōgmos), which together seem to denote the pressures and distresses caused by an ungodly and hostile world. He goes on to famine or nakedness, the lack of adequate food and clothing. Since in the Sermon on the Mount Jesus promised these to the heavenly Father’s children, would not their absence suggest that after all he does not care?

Paul concludes his list with danger or sword, meaning perhaps the risk of death on the one hand and the experience of it on the other, whether ‘the sword’ be ‘the final sword thrust of bandit or enemy soldier or executioner’. A willingness for martyrdom is certainly the final test of Christian faith and faithfulness. In order to underline this, the apostle quotes from a psalm which depicts the persecution of Israel by the nations. They were not suffering because they had forgotten the Lord or turned to a foreign god. Instead, they were suffering for the Lord’s sake, because of their very loyalty to him:

For your sake we face death all day long;

we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.

So what about these seven afflictions – and others too, since the list could be considerably lengthened? They are real sufferings all right – unpleasant, demeaning, painful, hard to bear and challenging to faith. And Paul knew what he was talking about, because he had himself experienced them all, and worse. Perhaps the Roman Christians were also having to endure similar trials. Indeed some of them did a few years later, when they were burned as living torches for the sadistic entertainment of the Emperor Nero. Those of us who have never had to suffer physically for Christ should perhaps read verses 35–39 alongside verses 35–39 of Hebrews 11, which list unnamed people of faith who were tortured, jeered at, flogged, chained, stoned, and even sawn in half. Faced with such heroism, there is no place for glibness or complacency.

Nevertheless, can pain, misery and loss separate Christ’s people from his love? No! On the contrary, far from alienating us from him, in all these things (even while we are enduring them) Paul dares to claim that we are more than conquerors (hypernikōmen). For we not only bear them with courage but triumph over them, and so ‘are winning a most glorious victory’ (BAGD) through him who loved us (37). This second reference to Christ’s love is significant, and the aorist tense shows that it refers to the cross. Paul seems to be saying that, since Christ proved his love for us by his sufferings, so our sufferings cannot possibly separate us from it. In the context, which began with a reference to our sharing Christ’s sufferings (17), they ‘should be seen as evidence of union with the crucified one, not a cause for doubting his love’.

Paul now reaches his climax. He began with we know (28); he ends more personally with I am convinced. He deliberately uses the perfect tense (pepeismai), meaning, ‘I have become and I remain convinced’, for the conviction he expresses is rational, settled and unalterable. He has asked questions whether anything will separate us from Christ’s love (35–36); he now declares that nothing can and so nothing will (37–39). He chooses ten items which some might think powerful enough to create a barrier between us and Christ, and he mentions them in four pairs, while leaving the remaining two on their own. Neither death nor life presumably alludes to the crisis of death and the calamities of life. Neither angels nor demons is more debatable. Demons translates archai, which elsewhere are certainly evil principalities. One would therefore expect the contrasting angels to be good. But how can unfallen angels threaten God’s people? Perhaps, then, this couplet is more indefinite and is simply meant to include all cosmic, superhuman agencies, whether good or bad. Since Christ has triumphed over them all, and they are now ‘in submission to him’, it is certain that they cannot harm us.

The next two pairs refer in modern language to ‘time’ (neither the present nor the future) and ‘space’ (neither height nor depth), while in between them, on their own, come unspecified powers, perhaps ‘the forces of the universe’ (reb). Some of these words, however, were technical terms for ‘the astrological powers by which (as many in the Hellenistic world believed) the destiny of humanity was controlled’. Alternatively, Paul’s language may have been more rhetorical than technical, as he affirms like Psalm 139:8 that ‘neither the highest height nor the deepest depth’, neither heaven nor earth nor hell, can separate us from Christ’s love. He concludes with nor anything else in all creation, in order to make sure that his list is comprehensive, and that nothing has been left out. Everything in creation is under the control of God the Creator and of Jesus Christ the Lord. That is why nothing will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord (39b).

Paul’s five questions are far from random. They are all about the kind of God we believe in. Together they affirm that absolutely nothing can frustrate God’s purpose (since he is for us), or quench his generosity (since he has not spared his Son), or accuse or condemn his chosen ones (since he has justified them through Christ), or cut us off from his love (since he has revealed it in Christ).

Here then are five convictions about God’s providence (28), five affirmations about his purpose (29–30) and five questions about his love (31–39), which together bring us fifteen assurances about him. We urgently need them today, since nothing seems stable in our world any longer. Insecurity is written across all human experience. Christian people are not guaranteed immunity from temptation, tribulation or tragedy, but we are promised victory over them. God’s promise is not that suffering will never afflict us, but that it will never separate us from his love.

This is the love of God which was supremely displayed in the cross (5:8; 8:32, 37), which has been poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit (5:5), which has drawn out from us our responsive love (8:28) and which in its essential steadfastness will never let us go, since it is committed to bringing us safe home to glory in the end (8:35, 39). Our confidence is not in our love for him, which is frail, fickle and faltering, but in his love for us, which is steadfast, faithful and persevering. The doctrine of ‘the perseverance of the saints’ needs to be renamed. It is the doctrine of the perseverance of God with the saints.

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