CRITICAL NOTES
Romans 8:34.—Justification opposed to accusation, defence and advocacy to condemnation.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— Romans 8:33-34
Christ’s intercessory work.
Christian faith teaches;
1. Christ’s ascension to God’s right hand;
2. Christ’s session at God’s right hand. “Right hand” =place for the nearest to the king, place for the dearest to the king (1 Kings 2:19).
What is He doing there?—
1. Ruling His people. The Father rules universe; the Son rules human race, whom He redeemed, until, after final judgment, He resigns that rule to the Father (1 Corinthians 15:24-28).
2. Helping His people. Cases in point: St. Stephen (Acts 7:55-56); St. Paul (Acts 18:9-11); St. John (Revelation 1:9-17).
3. Interceding for His people (Hebrews 7:25). “Ever.” Examples: In “stony ways” of trouble; in “tangled paths” of perplexity; in “sandy wastes” of spiritual weariness; in “flowery glades” of comfort and ease; on “steep precipices” of great temptation; on “slippery paths” of human praise. Illustrate by various stages in ascent of a Swiss mountain.
What is He doing for you now?—E.g., if steadfast; if doubting; if sinning; if tempted; if sorrowful for sin.—Dr. Springett.
SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS ON Romans 8:33-34
Election a prominent principle.—Let me say at once that I am not so vain as to suppose that I can clear up the mystery of this profound subject, which has exercised the ablest minds of Christendom in all ages; I can but offer some thoughts to my readers which may help to remove some difficulties in their minds, as they have in my own. Election, whatever it may mean, is a very plain doctrine of Scripture, and a very broad, clear fact in nature and in history. Let me know God’s decrees, and I joyfully accept them as my standards and rules of judgment. But I do not feel the same reverence for man’s version of God’s decrees. Let us consider, first, that something like election is a very prominent principle in all God’s acts and ways. It looks out on us from every page of Scripture; it is the key to the order of nature and of human history. What does it mean, this election unto eternal life? It is stated distinctly in Scripture that certain of the human race are “God’s elect,” and are what they are in character, privilege, and destiny in virtue of this sovereign, ordaining will of God. They were elect, but not unto themselves, or for the sake of their own future; but rather for the sake of the work which their position of privilege would enable them to do for mankind: elect to a great ministry, a noble leadership—to the front rank in the field, to the high place in the strain, to all that may purge a man of narrow, partial, and selfish imaginations, and make him understand that “God’s elect” must catch the Spirit of the elect One, who came into this world, “not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give His life a ransom for many.” It will readily be conceded that the question of election would present an entirely different aspect if any human being had prevailed to look into the book of the divine decrees. There are difficult and apparently conflicting statements in Scripture on this profound subject, arising from the fact that the whole sphere of it is beyond the grasp of our thought. The doctrine of a personal election must, in the very nature of things, have a mystery in the heart of it. God’s foresight, foreordering of the course of human affairs, and man’s freedom, conflict with each other in a way which puzzles the understanding. God had His eye on the great human mass, when He selected and separated a people, a people to be called by His name and live to His praise; and His chief interest in that elect people, we gather from prophetic scriptures, was the hope, of which they were the children, that through them the great human world would be blessed and gathered into the everlasting kingdom of the Lord. The fundamental principle—I should rather say the radical vital force—in all the higher developments of the spiritual life in man is the movement of the divine Spirit on the springs of our thought and will. The divine life in the soul is that in which the divine will and the human are one. Marriage, the marriage of souls, is the highest, the divinest ordinance of God in the sphere of this life. The elect are elect to live this life, which standeth in the knowledge of the eternal God—elect as Israel was elect to a very lofty level of life, to a high strong strain of duty, to live like Him the symbol of whose life was the cross. The apostolic epistles are full of “election.” Why? Because the men to whom and of whom they were written were full of the life. Wonder not that such “saints” as these clung sternly to their election. Wonder not that it was to an elect host that the trumpet note rang from the apostle’s lips. It meant for them that God was with them against a world which would else inevitably crush them—that God would uphold their lives and their ministry till the world which hated and trampled them beneath its grinding heel should break forth in praises to the Lord. These elect ones are just the front rank in the army, those in whom the divine call to the post of toil and peril has found an eager response. The election standeth in the manifestation of a life. To draw the world to Christ is the mission of the elect soul.—Baldwin Brown.