CRITICAL NOTES
Romans 8:29.—Foreknowledge communicates the strength of grace to those to whom it refers.
Romans 8:30. Called.—The cause of it God’s love, the act of calling; the effect, bestowal of blessings.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— Romans 8:29-31
The unseen and the seen.—The believer who has fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope set before him has strong consolation. St. Paul looks both before and behind: he looks behind to a past eternity, and before to a coming eternity, if to the word may be applied before and after and behind. Eternity and time are conjoined in the believer’s welfare. He is thus a creature of large surroundings. St. Paul seeks to inspire all believers with holy confidence. This confidence is begotten by a contemplation of:—
I. The things that are unseen.—“Foreknow,” foreordained. Accurately speaking, the words “before” and “behind” cannot be applied to Him who is from everlasting to everlasting, who dwells in one eternal now. What it is for a God to foreknow we cannot tell. Can time words and time processes be applied to eternal conditions? Thus are suggested the limitation of human thought and the inadequacy of human language. How glibly we speak and write about divine foreknowledge and foreordination; and yet with what humble reverence should we tread the sacred ground! We can only tunnel through the mountains and find ourselves in darkness. Our rushlights cannot reveal the rich treasures and glorious mysteries. Whatever the words mean, they must mean a richness of divine love and wisdom beyond our conception. Let the words thus speak to our inmost hearts and beget sweet confidence.
II. The things that are unseen working in the seen.—Foreknowledge and foreordination are the precedents. Calling, justification, glorification, are the consequents. The precedents are unseen, unknown; the consequents are seen, are known. With the inner eye we see the divine processes working in the human soul. We are not called upon to stand in a past eternity and read the divine decrees. Paul’s wisdom is vaster than ours, and he leaves the fores in a sweet vagueness. Are we called? Are we justified? Are the processes of life plainly tending to our glorification? Then let us have holy confidence; let us rejoice in the mercy and leave the mystery.
III. The revealed purpose.—That Christ might have a position of dignity; that all God’s redeemed might have outward and inward grandeur. The position of dignity the firstborn of many noble brethren. These conformed to the moral image. If with the freedom of some we applied human words to the divine, we may say that God had a lofty ideal for humanity. That ideal was the human-divine Man who for a short space glorified Palestine. In Christ’s earthly life, in its moral purity and glory, we read the divine ideal set forth in the revealed purpose of God. Christ begets confidence and inspires manhood.
IV. The revealed purpose fulfilled in part.—The actuals have not reached the ideal; but there have been some wonderful accomplishments. How marvellously near St. Paul himself came to the perfect image of God’s Son! In the modern Church how marvellously near was the sainted Fletcher of Madeley! Many Christlikenesses are walking the earth to-day, but our vision is so imperfect that we cannot see the close resemblances. Are we being transformed and conformed? Are Christlike lineaments being drawn in our moral natures? Is the evil being eliminated? Is the good getting universally prevalent? Is the divine hand shaping our moral nature? Is there the foretaste and pledge of glorification? Then the triumphant challenge, “If God be for us, who can be against us?” What a large if! It rises beyond the bounds of the material universe; it touches Omnipotence. “If God be for us, who can be against us?” Who can wage successful war against the Omnipotent? Who can confute Omniscience? If we did not know better, we might suppose that some moderns were the omniscients, while God was only in mental darkness. Creatures of a day presume to teach Him who inhabits eternity. The irony of the position! Do angels smile at human folly? Angelic pity checks the tendency. But why should we start and tremble for the ark of God? There should be no nervous worry about him who can sing, “If God be for us, who can be against us?”
True conformity.—By the “image” of Christ is here meant the “moral character” of Christ. And what a character was that! Goethe says, “I esteem the four gospels to be thoroughly genuine, for there shines forth from them the reflected splendour of a sublimity proceeding from the person of Christ, and of as divine a kind as was ever manifested upon earth.” Rousseau confesses, “If again the life and death of Socrates are those of a sage, the life and death of Jesus are those of a God.” And, to quote only the words of a more recent witness, who can be charged neither with intellectual deficiency nor with excess of religious sympathy—the late Mr. Mill—“Whatever else may be taken from us by rational criticism, Christ is still left a unique figure, not more unlike all His precursors than all His followers—a divine person, a standard of excellence and a-model for imitation, available even to the absolute unbeliever, and can never be lost to humanity.” In the entire conformity to the character of Christ there is;—
I. The complete satisfaction of the human soul.—In all moral existences there is an ideal character; a felt disagreement to this ideal is moral misery—agreement is alone moral satisfaction. The cause of all the moral misery in human souls is conscious discordance with this ideal. The character of Christ is this ideal. Souls can conceive of nothing higher, can desire nothing higher. They feel that if they live up to it, they shall be filled with all joy and peace. Only as men approximate to this ideal they grow in power, rise in dignity, and abound in satisfaction. Thank God that we have this ideal so exquisitely and fully wrought out in the life of Jesus Christ. He was incarnate virtue.
II. Harmony with the human race.—The human race is sadly divided; it is severed into numerous contending sections. The human house is divided against itself and cannot stand. The human body has not only its limbs amputated, but they are rattling one against another, and all against itself. It writhes with anguish. A reunion is essential to its health and peace and vigour. But what can unite men together? Universal conformity to rituals or doctrines, to political and ecclesiastical standards? Such conformity would be no union. Universal conformity to the image of Christ would unite the race. Let all men be Christlike, and all men will love one another. When all men become Christlike, and not before then, will hostile passions cease to flow, bloody wars terminate, all contentions cease, all men embrace each other as brethren and be “gathered together” in Christ as members to one body directed by one will. If you would divide men, preach doctrines and policies and ceremonies. If you would unite them, preach Christ and the moral grandeur of His character.
III. The grand purpose of the gospel.—What is the grand aim of the gospel? To give men theological knowledge and material civilisation? No; it does this, but does something infinitely grander—it gives men the character of Christ. It is to create us anew in Christ Jesus in good works. It is to inspire us with the Spirit of Christ, without which we are none of His. “Follow thou Me.” This is the burden of the whole gospel. Where the gospel does not do this for man, it does nothing of any lasting value; where it does this, it does everything. Are we like Christ? This is the testing question.
IV. The supreme duty of life.—What is our supreme duty? Assimilation to Christ. This, the grandest duty, is the most practical.
1. We are made by imitation.
2. Christ is the most imitable of all examples.
(1) The most admirable;
(2) the most transparent;
(3) the most unchanging;
(4) the most intimate. He is always with us—in the lives of good men, in the writings of true books, in the records of the evangelists, in the pulsations of conscience, in the influences of Providence.—Homilist.
SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS ON Romans 8:29-31
God for us.—“If God be for us, who can be against us?” Here is first a ground laid, and then a comfort built upon it. The ground that is laid is, “If God be with us.” When he saith, “If God be with us,” he doth not put the case, but lays it as a ground. “If God be with us,” as indeed He is with all His, in electing them, in calling them, in working all for their good, in glorifying them after, etc.—“if God be with us,” as He is, then this comfort is built upon this ground: “Who shall or can be against us?” For the first the ground that is laid is, that God is with His children. Indeed, He is with the whole world—He is everywhere; but He is with His Church and children in a more peculiar manner. The soul is spread in the whole body, but it is in the brain after another manner, as it understands and reasons. God is everywhere; but He is not everywhere comforting and directing and sanctifying, nor everywhere giving a sweet and blessed issue. God gives Himself variety of names, as there are variety of our distresses. Are we in misery? God is a rock, a shield, a tower of defence, a buckler—He is all that can be said for comfort. He is with us in His attributes and sweet relations, and all sweet terms that may support our faith, that whatsoever we see comfortable in the creature we may rise more comfortably to God, and say, God is my rock and shield, and my light and defence. And then God is with us in every condition and in every place whatsoever. He is not only a God of the mountains and not of the valleys, or a God of the valleys and not of the mountains, as those foolish people thought (1 Kings 20:28), but He is in all places and at all times with His. If they be in prison, He goes with them (Acts 16:22, seq.); he made the prison a kind of paradise, a heaven. In all our affairs whatsoever God is with us. “Fear not,” Joshua; “fear not,” Moses. What was the ground of their comfort? “I will be with thee.” He was with St. Paul in all conditions; therefore He bids him “fear not.” The ground of all is His free love in Christ. Christ was God with us first. God, that He might be with us, ordained that Christ should be God with us—“Emmanuel,” that He should take our nature into unity of person with Himself. Christ being God with us, that He might satisfy the just wrath of God for our sins, and so reconcile God and us together, He hath made God and us friends. So that this, that God is with us, it is grounded upon an excellent and sound bottom—upon the incarnation of our blessed Saviour. “Who shall be against us?” It is not a question of doubting, or inquisition to learn anything, but it is a question of triumph. He doth, as it were, cast a bank, and bid defiance to all enemies whatsoever. “Who shall be against us?” Let them stand out, Satan and the world, and all Satan’s supports; let them do their worst. There is a strange confidence which is seated in the hearts of God’s children that they dare thus dare hell and earth and all infernal; they set God so high in their hearts that they dare say, with a spirit of confidence, “Who shall be against us?” First of all you see, then, that the state of a Christian in this world is an impregnable state and a glorious condition. Here is glory upon glory, from this clause to the end of the chapter: “If God be with us, who shall be against us?” If God gave His Son for us, shall He not with Him give us all things else? There is another glorious speech: “Who shall lay anything to the charge of God’s people?” Another glorious, triumphant speech: “Who shall separate us from the love of God” founded in Christ? He loves Christ first and us in Christ as members; and as He loves Him eternally, so He loves us eternally too. Therefore, you see, every way the state of a Christian is a glorious condition. Here is a ground likewise of all contentment in any condition in the world. What can be sufficient to him that God cannot suffice? God, all-sufficient, is with thee; thou canst want nothing that is for thy good. Thou mayst want this and that, but it is for thy good that wantest it: those that fear God shall want nothing that is good. God is fitted for us, and we for Him. He can fill up every corner of the soul; He is larger than our souls: therefore let us be content in what condition soever we are in. God is with us.—Sibbes.
Prescience extendeth unto all things, but causeth nothing.—Predestination to life, although it be infinitely ancientor than the actual work of creation, doth notwithstanding presuppose the purpose of creation; because, in the order of our consideration and knowledge, it must first have being that shall have a happy being Whatsoever the purpose of creation therefore doth establish, the same by the purpose of predestination may be perfected, but in no case disannulled and taken away. Seeing, then, the natural freedom of man’s will was contained in the purpose of creating man (for this freedom is a part of man’s nature), grace contained under the purpose of predestinating man may perfect and doth, but cannot possibly destroy, the liberty of man’s will. That which hath wounded and overthrown the liberty wherein man was created as able to do good as evil is only our original sin, which God did not predestinate, but He foresaw it, and predestinated grace to serve as a remedy. Freedom of operation we have by nature, but the ability of virtuous operation by grace, because through sin our nature hath taken that disease and weakness whereby of itself it inclineth only unto evil. The natural powers and faculties therefore of man’s mind are, through our native corruption, so weakened, and of themselves so averse from God, that without the influence of His special grace they bring forth nothing in His sight acceptable; no, not the blossoms or least buds that tend to the fruit of eternal life. Which powers and faculties notwithstanding retain still their natural manner of operation, although their original perfection be gone; man hath still a reasonable understanding, and a will thereby framable to good things, but is not thereunto now able to frame himself. Therefore God hath ordained grace to countervail this our imbecility, and to serve as His hand, that thereby we, which cannot move ourselves, may be drawn, but amiably drawn. If the grace of God did enforce men to goodness, nothing would be more unpleasant unto man than virtue; whereas contrariwise there is nothing so full of joy and consolation as the conscience of well-doing.—Hooker.
Object of predestination.—The object of predestination is glory: I see thee believing; I will therefore that thou be glorified like My Son. Such is the meaning of the decree. The predestination of which Paul speaks is not a predestination to faith, but a predestination to glory, founded on the prevision of faith. Faith is in a sense the work of God; but it contains a factor, in virtue of which it reacts on God, as an object reacts on the mind which takes cognisance of it—this is the free adherence of man to the solicitation of God. Here is the element which distinguishes the act of foreknowledge from that of predestination, and because of which the former logically precedes the latter.—Godet.
Christ the firstborn.—God set up Christ as the great standard or standing copy, according to which all believers should be framed and wrought just like Him: “Whom He did foreknow, He also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren.” To the image of His Son; not to the image of the most glorious man that ever was in the world. Not to Enoch, that signal walker with God; nor Noah, the only loyal preacher of righteousness in his time; nor Abraham, God’s friend and the believer’s father; but His own Son, who was free from all taint of sin. As His perfect purity made Him fit to be a sacrifice to take away sin (1 John 3:5); to be an advocate to plead against sin, “Jesus Christ the righteous” (1 John 2:1),—so also to be the idea according to which all believers should be framed. Now the weakest habitual grace is an inchoative conformity to Christ as well as the strongest, and as well as that which is perfected in heaven, and hath in its own nature all the parts of that grace which is in Christ—as an infant in his body hath the lineaments of his father, as well as the grown son.—Charnock.
ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 8
Romans 8:31. Luther’s faith.—And for the time to come let us trust in God, that God will be with us if we be with Him, and stick to Him. Who then shall be against us? Let the devil, and Rome, and hell be all against us if God be with us. Bellarmine goes about to prove Luther a false prophet. Luther, as he was a courageous man and had a great and mighty spirit of faith and prayer, so his expressions were suitable to his spirit. What saith he? The cause that I defend is Christ’s and God’s cause, and all the world shall not stand against it. It shall prevail. If there be a counsel in earth, there is a counsel in heaven that will disappoint all. God laughs in heaven at His enemies; and shall we weep? And things are in a good way if we can go on and help the cause of God with our prayers and faith that God will go on, and with our cheerfulness and joy that God may delight to go on with His own cause. We may encourage ourselves; though perhaps we shall not see the issue of these things, yet posterity shall see it.