PAUL’S LETTER TO THE CHRISTIANS IN ROME

Home Introduction Contents Notes Next Page

One thing makes this chapter very special. It is that Paul speaks so often in it about the Holy Spirit. Until now, Paul has said little about the work which the Holy Spirit does in us. (See 5:50 and 7:6). Now he begins in verse 2 to talk about ‘the law of the Spirit’. That might only mean a ‘principle’. As we go through the chapter, we can see that the Holy Spirit is much more than a ‘principle’. He lives in us (verse 9). He leads us (verse 14). He is the Spirit of Sonship (verse 15). He helps us (verse 26). He is the Spirit of God and of holiness. He is truly God, one of the three persons of the Holy Trinity. The Holy Spirit is always ‘the Spirit of Christ’. There cannot be a separate ‘Gospel of the Spirit’.

Paul begins this chapter as he speaks about what God has done in his own life. Soon he speaks about ‘you’ (verse 9). In verse 12, it is ‘we’. It stays like that through the rest of this chapter. Paul speaks about what he shares with the Christians in Rome. This changes again in Chapter 9.

We should be careful how we use the English NIV of this chapter. For one example, the word ‘controlled’ in verses 6 and 8 is far too strong. Also the NIV often brings in the idea of sin when Paul did not.

Verses 1-11: Life through the Spirit

Two thousand years ago, Christ died for us and rose again from death. God promises that He will give to us life for ever and glory. These two seem a long way apart. Now we may think about the work of the Holy Spirit in us. It is the way that God joins together what Christ did for us and what He will give to us.

So in verse 1 Paul goes on with what he said in 7:6. Once, we were not ‘in Christ’. Now, by God’s grace, we have faith and we are ‘in Christ’. We are one with Him. We are united to Him. We are part of His body. Now some people argue as to just what this means. If we could understand what they say, it might not help us much!

It may help us more if we think about ‘in Christ’ as a large area or space. There is room there for Jesus Himself. There is room for faith, love and hope. There is room for every real Christian ‘in Christ’. There is room for you and for me. There is no room
‘in Christ’ for ‘condemnation’.

Now ‘condemnation’ is what happens at the end of a trial. The judge speaks. He may say that the man on trial is ‘not guilty’. In that case, the man on trial is ‘justified’. The judge may say that the man on trial is ‘guilty’. That is the judge’s ‘verdict’. The judge condemns him. Then the judge will say in what way he chooses to punish the guilty man. That is the judge’s ‘sentence’. The word ‘condemnation’ here is about our sin. When we come to verse 3, we shall find that God has condemned our condemnation. When condemnation is condemned, we are justified. There is nothing left for us but righteousness.

In verse 2, Paul says more about what is true of us when we are ‘in’ (not ‘through’) Christ Jesus. There is a law which sets me free! Now men make far too many laws. Every time they make another law, they take away some more of our freedom. So this new law of God is very wonderful. It is a law or ‘principle’ but it does not take freedom away from us. It sets me free from another law or ‘principle’. This is the law of sin and death. We have met it before. It is God’s law that where there is sin, death must follow.

The new law is ‘the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus’. We are free to read those words in two or three different ways. None of them is wrong. They are all true. The ‘Spirit of life’ means ‘the Spirit who gives life’, that is, the Holy Spirit. We may read the words in these ways:-
a) The law (or ‘principle’) of the Spirit is that there shall be life in Christ Jesus and this sets us free; or
b) The law of the Spirit of life sets us free when we are in Christ Jesus; or even
c) this (new) law - that the Spirit of life sets us free when we are in Christ Jesus. New life takes the place of death.
God hates death. He has promised that ‘death will be swallowed up in victory’ (1 Corinthians 15:54 and Isaiah 25:8).

Verse 3 is full of great truths. These are some of them:-
a) There was something which God’s Law could not do. It could say that sin was wrong. It could tell the sinner that he was wrong. It could not break the power of sin in a man’s life. God had not given His Law to men to do that work in them.

b) The law was ‘made weak through the flesh’. The law worked away. It tried to put sin right ‘in the flesh’. At last it was too weak to do any more. It was just worn out It never did get beyond the flesh to the heart. It was the heart which was wrong, and needed to be put right. The Good News works the other way. God gives us a new clean heart. Then His grace works out from the heart to the mind and the flesh.

c) What God’s law could never do, God himself has done. This is to ‘condemn sin’.

d) God did this when he sent His own Son. That is, of course, our Lord Jesus Christ.
1. God sent His Son from the glory of heaven.
2. God sent Jesus into this dark and sinful world.
3. God sent Jesus in real human flesh.
4. Jesus had no sin: He was sinless, not sinful.
5. Yet, Paul says, Jesus was in the likeness of sinful flesh. Paul really says:- ‘the flesh of sin’. Jesus had no sin, but that did not make Him seem very different from other people. [8.1]

e) Paul then tells us why God sent Jesus. It was not just to teach men or to do good. It was not just to set men a good example. It was all about sin. Now most English Bibles will show you that Paul said ‘for sin’. Yet the Jewish Christians at Rome would know that Paul meant ‘an offering for sin’. This, after all, was the only way that God could end the power of sin. Only because he was the great Son of God could Jesus make a ‘sin offering’ which was great enough to meet the needs of us all.

So God has condemned sin. He has done this ‘in the flesh’. That was the very place where sin’s power was greatest.

This was what God did for us when Jesus died. Now Paul will tell us what God does in us. He explains this in a number of different ways. These are ways in which the Holy Spirit works in our lives. First, in verse 4, Paul says that Christians do not walk ‘after the flesh’. They walk ‘after the Spirit’. ‘To walk’ here means the way we behave. It means our whole way of life. The Spirit is the Holy Spirit. Paul says, ‘flesh’, not ‘the sinful nature’ (NIV). We may ‘walk after the flesh’ even though we are not full of sin. If we walk ‘after the Spirit’, it does not mean that we have no sin at all. As Christians, we do obey God’s will. When we obey Him, we are not perfect, but it is real obedience. We obey God but not because He has given His Law. We obey Him because He is our Father. We are His children. We obey God because we love Him. God will say ‘yes’ when we obey Him like this. He will accept us when we obey Him. [8.2] This verse speaks about the work of the Spirit in our life as other people see it.

Verses 5-8 speak about the work of the Holy Spriit with our minds. This is a gentle work of God’s grace. The Holy Spirit is Himself God and God’s grace is strong. Yet if we bring in a word like ‘control’ here, we shall not understand what Paul says. Paul uses so few words here that it is not easy. It is safest to bring in the idea of ‘walking’ from verse 4; it means the way we behave, our whole way of life. So (verse 5) Paul means, those people who ‘walk after’ the flesh care about the things of the flesh. People who ‘walk after’ the Spirit care about the things of the Spirit. We may want to think about ‘walk after’ as ‘follow’.
(Verse 6) ‘For the mind of the flesh is death’. Even before death, people who have ‘the mind of the flesh’ will not enjoy peace. At the end, the flesh must die. ‘The mind of the Spirit’ is the mind of the Christian. The Spirit of God has given him new life and light in his mind. He enjoys peace with God and the life which God has promised to us.
(Verse 7) The mind of any man ought to be ‘subject to’ God’s Law. We should at least want to obey God. Instead, ‘the mind of the flesh’ makes war against God. In any army, the ordinary soldier takes his orders from the officers who are above him. The soldier is ’subject to’ his officers. He is beneath them in rank. The mind of the flesh does not place itself under God like this. It ought to. Paul goes further than this. He says that the mind of the flesh cannot do this. So (verse 8) those who have ’the mind of the flesh’ cannot meet God’s wishes. We please ourselves. Sometimes we try to please other people. We ought to please God.

Verses 9-11 speak about the Holy Spirit and our bodies. See verses 10 and 11. Our faith in Christ is not only to do with the mind. What we think does matter, but what we do matters as well. Just as in verse 2, Paul spoke about us ‘in Christ Jesus’, so now he says that we are ‘in the Spirit’. We are either ‘in the Spirit’ or ‘in the flesh’. ‘Controlled by’ in the NIV is again too strong. Not only are we ‘in the Spirit’, but also the Spirit of God makes His home in us. If you really understand these words, they will seem strange. We must listen to Paul as he goes on if we want help to understand them. Paul speaks like this again in Ephesians 3:16 and 17.

The second half of verse 9 gives the same truth the other way round. No one can say:- ‘I am a Christian, but I do not have the Holy Spirit’.

In verse 10, Paul says that although we are Christians, we must expect our bodies to die. This is because we have sinned. Yet we are more than just bodies. Your spirit is life because of righteousness. [8.4] Righteousness here means that God has given judgment in our favour. He has justified us. He has given to us the righteousness of Christ, which is more than enough to cover all our sins.

So Paul says these things in verse 11:-

a) Christ rose from the dead. That is, His body rose! The Man, Jesus, rose. It was not just His Spirit.
b) This was God’s work. It did not ‘just happen’.
c) The Spirit is the Spirit of this same God.
d) This same Spirit make His home in us. He is not just with our spirit; He is in our bodies!
e) These bodies of ours will die but God will give them new life.

The end of God’s way is for us to have bodies. It is not just that our spirits will live on when our bodies die. Here is the promise that we too, like Christ, will rise from the dead. This is ‘the wonderful Scripture Gospel for the body’.

All this means that we must keep our bodies pure and holy. See 1 Corinthians 6:13-15.

Verses 12-27: Holiness, Suffering and Glory

There is something very wrong with any Christian who does not even want his life to be holy. See 1 Corinthians 1:30 and 1 Peter 1:15 and 16. See too Hebrews 12:14. That verse brings together the holiness we need and our last glory, which is to see God.

So in verse 12, Paul still speaks about the work which the Holy Spirit does in us. We have an ‘obligation’, a duty or debt to the Holy Spirit. God has given to us His Holy Spirit. That is why we have a debt to pay back. Sometimes we have a debt, but we have nothing we can pay it off with. That is bad. We shall get into trouble! If we have a debt, and we have all that we need to pay it off, that is good. We have plenty with which to pay off the debt that we owe to God. We owe nothing to ‘the flesh’. Now again, if you use the NIV you will see that it has ‘sinful nature’. Paul says nothing about ‘sin’ here. The ‘flesh’ may try very hard; it may be rather good, in fact. It does not have to be sinful! It is flesh, not spirit. See John 3:6. Often it is not easy for us to tell what is flesh and what is spirit.

(Verse 13) [8.5] Death faces us, whatever we do. We have a choice between death and death! If we live our lives in the way of the flesh, we shall die. Death may be near to us or far away. It is certain in either case. To die here means that you will not gain eternal life. Paul says: ‘There is another choice’.

The other way is to kill or ‘put to death’ the works of the flesh. Once again, Paul does not say ‘sinful works’. They may be rather good ‘works of the flesh’. We may be quite proud of them. They must be put to death ‘by the Spirit’. Some people try to kill the ‘works of the flesh’ with other works of the flesh! This will not do, although this is what much religion is about. ‘Kill sin or it will kill you’. See Colossians 3:5-8.

Then Paul speaks about the new life which we have in Christ. (Colossians 3:9-17). See also Mark 8:35 and 9:43; Luke 14:26 and Galatians 5:24. Real Christian holiness has two other parts. To put sin to death is only one of the three. We must also give ourselves up to God. We call this ‘consecration’. See Romans 12:1. The third part is separation. See 2 Corinthians 6:17. We need to be separate from the world and separate to God.

These things are not ‘putting sin to death’:-

1. To cover up our sins so that other people do not see them. That is ‘hypocrisy’.
2. To find a false peace in our sins.
3. To turn from one sin to another sin, which perhaps do not seem to us to be so bad.
4. To leave sins behind because we are too old, and no longer desire them.
5. To have a victory over temptation and sin now and then. A worse failure follows!
6. We sometimes find rest from temptation and sin in times of trouble. When the trouble goes, the sin comes back. That does not ‘put sin to death’.
7. To run away from temptation is not to put sin to death. Yet it is wise when we do sin, to look back and to learn where the temptation came from. We may be able to keep away from some temptations.

These things may help us:-

1. We should know and feel that we are in real danger. See 1 Peter 2:11 and 5:8. This is why Jesus taught to pray: ‘Deliver us from evil‘. (Matthew 6:13) Our desires may not be sinful, yet they are at war with our souls. The ‘flesh’ is a good servant but a bad master.

2. Solomon built God a wonderful temple. Yet he also had many women and they led him to worship false ‘gods’. He obeyed God in one part of his life but not in others. We must obey God in every part of our lives.

3. So we must pray Psalm 139. God can show us sin in parts of our life which we had never thought about or looked at.

4. Prayerful use of God’s Word and true prayer will help us. There should be order in our lives, but not just a habit of religion.

5. Sin grows out of temptations. Our Lord taught us to pray:- ‘Lead us not into temptation’. To be ‘led into temptation’ is to begin to enjoy it. It is always much harder to say ‘No!’ to sin then than when we are first tempted.

6. We should expect success. God does know how to give you help.

7. Christ won His battle against sin and temptation. (Luke 4:1-13). So He is able to help us.
We said that in verses 6 and 7, ‘controlled by the Spirit’ in the NIV was far too strong. In this verse we begin to see that the work of the Spirit in us is a work of grace. The Spirit does not put sin to death in you. You, through the Spirit, put sin to death. This is a wonderful, even a strange way to speak. The Spirit of God is the Holy Spirit. He makes us holy. We can see that the Spirit’s work is a work of grace from the verses which follow. In verse 14, the Spirit leads us. We follow. In verse 15, He makes us cry out to God as our Father. Then in verse 16, the Holy Spirit ‘bears witness’ or testifies with our own spirit that we are the children of God. See also verses 26 and 27, and any other place which speaks of these things. Think about Ephesians 6:17 and 18.

So we leave verse 13, with its promise that we shall enjoy this life and the life of glory. We have learnt to choose between the flesh and the Spirit. This is not the same as to choose between good works and bad works. Remember that many of the Christians in Rome were Jews. They wanted to do ‘good works’ to show God just how good they were!
In verse 14, Paul may think about the Jews at the Exodus. [8.6] The Jews had led a life of fear as slaves in Egypt. They did not go anywhere then. God led them out of Egypt and made them free. Some of them found that it was not easy to be free. They rather wanted to go back to Egypt to be slaves again. So Paul does not say that the Spirit of God drives us. He leads us into freedom. This freedom is the freedom of the children of God. See the teaching of Jesus in John 8:31-36. In those days a master might sell a slave. The slave would have to leave his home and go to live somewhere else. He did not even have his own name! His new master might give him a different name. That could not happen to a son.

We are sons. We have the right to stay in God’s ‘house’ or family. Paul really goes on with this thought in verse 17, but first we must look at verses 15 and 16. There, Paul’s thought takes him off in two other ways.

First in verse 15, he says that God gave to us His Spirit. We began a new life. In the old life, we lived in fear like slaves. Masters would punish slaves if they did anything wrong, and often they would punish them for no reason at all. See 1 Peter 2:20. God gave to us the Spirit of Sonship. We became sons of God. It is the Holy Spirit Who moves us to cry out to God as our Father. There are many people today who think that Christians are wrong to do this. Yet it was Jesus Himself who taught us to call God our Father. If we cry out like this, we shall have right thoughts about God’s greatness. We shall know too that His love and grace to us are wonderful.

In verse 16, it is almost as though we are in a court of law. There are two witnesses who speak. One is our own spirit. The other is the Spirit of God. They both say the same thing. ‘You are a child of God’. God chooses to make us His sons. He ‘adopts’ us. This gives to us the name of sons, and the rights of sons. Then God gives us the new birth. His Spirit gives us a new nature.

We must say something more about ‘adoption’. A Roman father had complete power over all his family. This was part of Roman law [8.7]. A father had the power of life and death over all his family, and this meant his son as well. If a son was to be adopted, he had to pass from the power of one father to the power of another father. So what happened was this. The two fathers took some scales and copper money. The father sold his son to the other man, who then sold the son back to the father. This was done again. The third time the father sold his son but the other man did not sell him back. So then the new father had to go off to a law officer to make out a legal case for the adoption. The son lost all his rights in his old family. He gained full rights in his new family, even if other sons were born later. If the adopted son owed money before he was adopted, these debts were wiped out.

Now God has chosen us. He has adopted us and we are now His sons. So verse 17 adds that we are ‘heirs’. We are ‘heirs’ of the life of glory. We shall live with God. We shall share in all that God has to give to men.

We must not leave verse 17 until we have said a little more.
a) Paul does not just say that we shall be ‘glorified’. We shall share the glory of Christ. See also John 17:24.

b) Many millions of people from all around the world will share Christ’s glory. There will be enough for them all. There will be enough for each one.

c) Paul says that we share in Christ’s sufferings. See Philippians 3:10 and Acts 9:16. We know that a few years after the Romans read this letter, many of them suffered. See too Colossians 1:24. To suffer brings pain and sorrow. To suffer for Christ will bring joy as well.

Verses 18 - 27 Suffering and Glory

When we come to verse 28, we shall read about what we know. Before we get there, we shall read (verse 26) about what we do not know. In verse 27, we read about what God knows although we do not. In verses 18-27, we read that we wait (verse 190 and ‘groan’ (verse 23 and also verse 22 and verse 26).

Now we know that Jesus talked about flowers and the birds. He talked about farms and sheep. He talked about the hills. Paul’s journeys took him over the seas and up into the mountains. Yet he does not talk very much at all about such things. He was a city man. These verses tell us a little about how Paul thought about nature.Still, he begins with the ideas which he spoke about in verse 17.

We need to see that in verses 18-27 Paul speaks about three things which ’groan’. To groan is to make a sad, unhappy noise. It is the deep noise which we make when we are in real pain or sorrow. The first of the three is in verse 22. The whole creation groans. Then in verse 23, Christians groan. In verse 26 it is the Holy Spirit who groans. That, surely, is strange.

The other thing to see in these verses is Paul’s teaching about creation. People often say that God’s creation in Genesis 1 was perfect. Now Genesis 1 says (verse 31) that God looked at His world in creation and He saw that it was very good. That is not the same as ’perfect’. When Adam sinned, what he did made the whole creation less good. In Genesis 3:17-19, God curses the ground because of what Adam has done. So the world that we know is not as good as the world which God made in Genesis 1.

Now we will look at these verses. In verse 18, Paul weighs what we suffer now, that is, in this life. Then he weighs ‘the glory that will be revealed in us’. Paul really says ‘into us’. At present a curtain or veil hides this glory from us. God will take this veil away. It is, of course, God who will make known this glory. We do not expect that to happen in this life. It will be in the life to come. Paul says that the glory is very great. The suffering is very small. This is what he ‘reckons’.

In verse 19, our English Bibles do not seem quite as strong as what Paul says. He begins to speak now about the creation or ‘all nature’. It is like a man who wants something good to happen. He strains forward. He waits with his head stretched forward. In verse 20, Paul says that the creation is ‘empty’. Of course, the world is full of wonderful things. Yet when men work, they do not get the results that they hope for. Back in Genesis 3:17-19, God told Adam that it would be like that. Creation did not choose this. And this was not God’s last work. God gave hope as well. Verse 21 tells us what this hope is. God already sets Christian people free. God will also set the whole of creation free. Creation is now like a slave; everything goes bad or ‘decays’. God has already given his children ‘the freedom of the glory’. God will set creation free so that it can move into that same glory.

In verse 22, Paul goes on to say more about this. (See Jeremiah 12:4 and Psalm 107:33 and 34.) Creation is like a woman who is about to give birth to a baby. She is in pain. She cries and she groans. We may guess that Paul means that Creation tries hard to give birth to God’s new order, and it will at last. But in verse 23 he turns away from what he has said about creation, to talk instead about Christians.

So Paul says these things about us:-

1. We live in this creation, which groans. We too ‘groan’.
2. We have and enjoy the ‘firstfruits’ of the Spirit, that is the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is Himself God, so the Spirit is far far too great for us to receive. So we have a small part, so to speak. The word Paul uses for ‘firstfruits’ was used in a number of ways. If we want to buy something but do not have enough money with us, we may pay part. The man in the shop will keep the goods that we want. We pay the rest later and take the goods then. That is a ‘down payment’, and Paul’s word was used like that. God has given us a ‘down payment’ of His Spirit; the rest will follow in glory!

The word had another use. In many countries, you have to carry a card. This tells the police who you are when they stop you. It is an identity card. We carry the ‘identity card’ of the Spirit which shows that we are children of God.

3. Then ‘we wait’. Creation waits too for God to set it free. (Verse 21) We wait for ‘the redemption of our bodies’. The gift of God’s Spirit to us is great and wonderful. But it is not God’s last gift to us. God has made us His children already, but the people of the world do not see this. John says the same things in 1 John 3:1-3. We are redeemed by Christ, yet we shall die and our bodies will ‘decay’ or go bad. God promises us a body in glory. It will be better than the body which we have now, and just as real. We shall not be just ‘souls’ or ‘spirits’. If we did not have bodies, we would feel ‘naked’. We shall be clothed with new bodies. See what Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5:1-5.

In verses 24 and 25, Paul goes on to talk about hope. All Paul says is: ‘For by hope we were saved’. It is God who has saved us. [8.8] Perhaps what Paul says here is that when God saves us we have both faith and hope.

It is fairly easy to see what our faith has to do. Faith has to join us to the Lord Jesus Christ. We are not saved without hope. Paul has told us what it is that we hope for. It is ‘the redemption of our bodies’ which is something we do not see yet at all. So the second time Paul uses the word ‘hope’ he means ‘the thing that we hope for’. If we can see these things, they do not stir up the feeling of hope in us. This is what the third word ‘hope’ means. The fourth use also means ‘the feeling of hope’. If we already have what we want, we shall not hope for it.

Verse 25 tells us that we are sure that we shall have what we hope for. It may be soon. It may be a long way off. We do not know. God will give it to us, so we can wait. Very often, the Christian would feel no hope at all unless the Spirit of God was with him. Remember that hope is not less good than faith.

So in verse 26, Paul says that the Spirit of God comes to help us. He comes from God in heaven. He takes a share of our weakness! That is very wonderful. The Spirit, Who is God, the All Powerful, shares our weakness. Yet it is what the Lord Jesus Christ did when He was born. So Paul says these things about us:-

1. We do have the help of the Holy Spirit. It is, of course, help which God gives in the way of grace.
2. We know that we ought to pray to God. We need to pray to Him, too.
3. Yet it is not so simple. Sometimes when we pray, we ask God for things we should not have. They would not be good for us. At other times, there are things which we ought to ask for, but we do not. This is not new. About the first prayer in the Bible is in Genesis 15:2. God gave Abram great promises in verse 1. In verse 2 Abram does not know what to ask God for. It is good to look at the other prayers of Abram (or Abraham) later on in Genesis.
Perhaps the great thing for us to learn is that often when we think that we do know what to pray for, we are wrong. We do not know.
4. What we pray for does matter. How we pray matters even more. The words which we use may not be put together very well. Our prayer may not sound very good to other people. What does matter is that we pray from our hearts, not just with our mouths. We need the Holy Spirit to move our hearts to pray.
5. Paul’s word for ‘intercede’ once meant that people met each other and talked. But it came to mean that one person ‘put in a good word’ for someone else. He spoke to gain favour for this other person. So the Holy Spirit Himself speaks to God the Father to gain favour for us. What we long to say to God cannot be put into words. It is too deep for words. But the Holy Spirit does not need to use words.

In verse 27, it is God who ‘searches the hearts of men’. [8.9] It is not for us to try to search God! We do not know how to pray, but God does know. ‘The mind of the Spirit’ here may not mean ‘the mind of the Holy Spirit’. It may mean the mind of the Christian. We know what is in our hearts. There is much sin. We feel shame. Yet the Spirit of God does not only bring to us the knowledge of God and of salvation by His grace. Also the Spirit knows the best and the worst about us, so God knows this too. This is why we are safe in God’s love.

Verses 28-39: By God’s grace, the Christian will win in the end.

There are some things which Christians do know. See verse 22 for one. There are some things that we do not know. See verse 26. In verse 28 Paul tells us some more things which he says ‘we know’. [8.10]
1. God is at work. It is not always a work of power. It is not always a work that we can see. Often it is a hidden work. It is the work of grace in the hearts of men. Often when we pray, we should ask for this kind of work.
2. God has a special care for those who love Him. Much of His work is done to help them.
3. Yet we must not think that it is because we love Him that God helps us. ‘We love Him because He first loved us’, says John. God has a purpose or design. As part of this, He calls us. So we become followers of His Son, Jesus.
4. It is the same people who love God and who have heard His call. In the next two verses, Paul will say a lot more like this.
5. It is not just by ‘luck’ or ‘chance’ that we love God. It is not because we are a little better than someone else either! It is all part of His great purpose. That is why we are safe.

If we look at one thing that happens to us, it may seem to be bad. It may seem to work against us. Paul says that all things work together for good. Now we want to know what this ‘good’ is.

So in verse 29, Paul begins to use some great words. First, Paul saya that the Christians are people that God ‘knew before’. We want to ask: ‘before what?’ We believe that Paul means more than ‘before we were born’. We believe that he means ‘before time began’. Look at 1 Peter 1:2. God knows and He chooses. In Acts 2:23, Peter puts God’s will or purpose before His knowledge.

Now God is far greater and more wonderful than we are. We may not say: ‘God must know before He can choose’. We can only choose what we know. All we can say is that in God, to know, to choose and to will all agree. They do not fight each other. What is clear is that God chose us ‘in Christ’. That means that He did not choose us because He saw that we would be good. Of course, it means far more than that. He did not see that we would be a bit better than the man next door. God saw that we were sinners and that we were lost. He saw, too, that there was grace to save us in Christ. That grace would make sinners into saints. [8.11]

There is a chain of favours which God gives to us. Where the first link in the chain is in place, all the rest will follow.

Our Bibles next say that God ‘predestined’ those people that He chose. This is not a good word. It does not help us at all to understand what Paul means here. Early on, Christian people turned the Greek scriptures into Latin, the language of the Romans. They used a Latin word which was like ‘predestine’ and it comes on to us in English. The picture which it gives to us is quite wrong.

I like to explain it like this. Some years ago we went to Scarborough in Yorkshire on holiday. One day we went up a high hill. From the top we could look down on the town. We could also see the railway line and the station where the railway ended. Then we saw a train on its way to the town. It could only run along the railway line. It could only go as far as the station. That was its ‘destination’. When it started out on its journey, that was all settled. It was ‘predestined’ to go to Scarborough station. That is the picture in the word ‘predestine’. Everything is narrow and fixed. We can only go so far.

We could stand in the same place and look around us. We could see far to the east over the North Sea. Then to the north we could see hills a long way away. To the south west was farmland which stretched away. There was a limit to what we could see. That limit was the ‘horizon’. It was a broad limit. It could not be broader, and the higher up you go, the wider it will be.

So Paul says first that God knew His people and He chose them. Then he says that God has done something more for these same people. He has fixed a limit to what He will do for them. It is not a narrow limit. Like the horizon, it is the broadest limit. Within that wide limit we shall be free. We shall have a great honour. We shall be like God’s Son, the Lord Jesus. We shall be pictures of Him. Now you can have many pictures of one person. They may be photographs. They will all be good pictures. Yet no two of them will be quite the same. So we will all be like Jesus, yet we will all be different from each other.

Now of course, Paul does not just mean that we shall look like Jesus. He means that we shall be like Him. We shall share His goodness, His kindness, His love, His meekness and His holiness. We are to take the same shape or form as Jesus. This is very wonderful. In 8:3, Paul told us that God sent Jesus ‘in the likeness of sinful flesh’. Now we can see why God did this. He did it so that sinners like us could share the likeness of Jesus. (Paul does not use the same word for ‘likeness’ in these two verses).

In verse 30, we move on. In verse 29, Paul spoke about what God decided. We did not know about that. It went on in the mind and will of God.

Now Paul adds that God calls these very same people. We should not think that God’s choice of us does not matter. His will for us matters in every way. Now, however, it breaks into our lives. God calls us. He calls us from our sins. He calls us to follow the Lord Jesus Christ. He calls us to be holy. He calls us out of the world. He calls us to glory. Now this is the simple way that the New Testament talks about the way we become Christians. Through the Word of God or through the words of a preacher, God calls us. We hear and obey.

Paul says two more great things about these same people. God justifies us. In His court of law, He gives a decision in our favour. He says ‘No’ to our sins, but He says ‘Yes’ to us. Jesus has taken away our sins and so God will forgive us. Then God gives us glory. Jesus is in glory now. (See John 17:24). At last, God will make us like Jesus. Indeed God makes us like Jesus now when we suffer (Philippians 3:10). So we know that we shall be like Him in glory. Then Paul tells us a little about the reason why God does all this. This is at the end of verse 30. Christ always was God, and He always was the Son of God. He is with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God. So as God, He is not alone. He is also a real man. He would be alone, the only Man in glory. God’s will is that He should not be alone but the first in honour among many brothers.

I think we can hear what some of the people who read Paul’s letter at Rome would say. ‘Yes, this all sounds wonderful. But you have to remember how hard life is now for some of us.’ Paul might just have said that his life was often hard too. He does not, and he is quite right not to. This is no way to answer people. Paul does not leave God out and we should not either.

In verses 31-39 he shows how the truths about God enter into our lives. So in verse 31, Paul says that God is ‘for us’. It is not that we are on God’s side! The truth is much bigger than that. We may say: ‘The world, the flesh and the devil are all against me’. God will bring us to glory, and He will see that all the things which are against us, work for our good. Do not forget verse 28! God is at work and He helps us.

Then in verse 32, Paul says that God has already done the biggest thing of all. He gave up Jesus to die for us. If God did the greatest thing of all for us, He will do all the smaller things too. God did not spare His own Son. In Genesis 22 we read how Abraham did not hold back his own son, Isaac. See Romans 11:21, when Paul says that God did not spare Israel. Look at 2 Peter 2:4 where we read that God does not spare angels. Then look at Malachi 3:17 where God says that He will spare us. Notice that it was not the Jews or the Romans who gave up Jesus to die. It was not any man, but God Himself. Among the ‘all things’ which God will give are His Holy Spirit and a new heart, light in our minds and love, and the forgiveness of sins.

In verses 32-34 Paul takes us into God’s court of law. This is not the first time. We know who the Judge is. It is God Himself. Jesus is there (verse 34). He is not just with us. He is with God, and He speaks in our favour. See 1 John 2:1. We seem to be there too. Yet someone is not there. There is no one to speak against us. There is no one to say what wrong we have done. There is no ‘accuser’ to say why God should punish us. There is no one to bring charges against us.

That is the picture. Paul says first:- ‘God has chosen us. He chose us although we were sinners. Now even the devil himself cannot speak against us in God’s court’. It is God Himself, the Judge, who decides in favour of us. No one can go against God. (Verse 34) ‘Who is he that condemns?’ In God’s court, the One Who is closest to God in power is Jesus. If anyone can say anything to God against us, it is Jesus. But instead, He speaks to God in our favour. He has died for us, to put away our sins. God has raised Him from death to new life. Still more, God has told Jesus to share His royal seat or ‘throne’ and to take the place of honour at His right side.

There are about twenty five places in the Bible which tells us that Jesus is now seated in glory with God the Father. This is the only place in Romans.

So in verse 35, Paul adds that nothing can come between us and Christ’s love for us. Many things will try hard. Paul lists some of them. They were things which he knew all about. In verse 36, he uses words from Psalm 44:2. Hundreds of years before, the man who wrote the Psalm said that. So it should not come as a surprise to us. See 1 Peter 4:12. We must be very sure that it is for the sake of God and of Christ that we face death. Other people may think of us just like sheep which have been counted out to be killed.

In verse 37 there is one thing which Paul does not tell us. He tells us that we ‘overconquer’. ‘We are winning an overwhelming victory’. We do more than win the fight. It is through Him Who loved us, the Lord Jesus Christ, that we win. It is in all the trouble Paul spoke about in verse 35 that we win. It is not that we escape troubles or get away from them to win. We win, but Paul does not say who the loser is. We win because we are faithful to Christ. It does not matter so much who we beat! If you look at the Book of Revelation, you will see that John often speaks about the victory which God’s people win. See 2:7; 2:11; 2:27; 2:26; 3:5; 3:12; 3:21 and 21:7. Revelation 15:2 is the verse which tells us what we get the victory over.

Then in verses 38 and 39 Paul gives us a list. It is of those things which cannot come in between us and the love of God. We often say: ‘Either this must be true or else that must be true’. Paul often does not argue like that. He often says ‘neither this - nor that’. This is the way that he speaks here. He speaks about the present and the future, but not about the past. Our sins in the past did come between us and God, but now God has forgiven us. Words like ‘height and depth’ take in everything in between. [8.12] The mention of ‘all creation’ will remind us of verses 20 and 22. Paul could even mean that there may be other ‘creations’ beside the one that we know. Nothing from them can come between us and Jesus.

Last of all in this part of his letter, Paul tells us again what the ‘love of God’ which he speaks about is. It is not a love which God feels in some weak way for all men. It is His love in Christ. It is the love which brought Jesus from glory into this world to save us. It is the love which led Jesus to die on the cross to get rid of our sins. That same love is still ‘in Christ Jesus’; and Jesus (verse 34) is in the place of power and honour. He is at God’s right hand.