Romans 8

CHAPTER VIII

The Guidance of the Spirit, 8:1–17

The reasons for making a division at this point are as follows: this entire chapter deals with the work of the Holy Spirit, he and his work being mentioned here for the first time; from the fact that sin is still present in the regenerate Paul turns to the new life in him which really makes him what he is. The old chapter division is correct. This is felt even by those who think that 7:14–25 deals with the unregenerate and who thus refer 8:1 to justification. Paul writes a letter and not a formal dissertation; hence he connects the new line of thought with the old since there is a connection between them. Yet the connecting words by no means forbid making a new division at this point.

Romans 8:1

1 Accordingly, now, not one condemnation for those in Christ Jesus! For the law of the Spirit of the life in Christ Jesus liberated me from the law of the sin and of the death. For the thing impossible for the law, in that it was weak by means of the flesh, God, by sending his own Son in likeness of sin’s flesh and in regard to sin, condemned the sin in the flesh in order that the righteous requirement of the law may be fulfilled in us as those walking not according to flesh but according to spirit.

It is easy to follow the thought of v. 1–11: 1) because of our connection with Christ, the Spirit freed us for living in the spirit, v. 1–4; 2) we differ entirely from those who live in the flesh, v. 5–10; 3) the Spirit will bring even our bodies to spiritual perfection, v. 11. This objective elaboration is followed by a statement of obligation and by a promise, v. 12–17.

The introductory ἄρανῦν combines the particles, νῦν making ἄρα stronger; ἄραοὖν are combined thus in 7:25 although νῦν is not οὖν. This “now” is incorrectly made temporal when it is contrasted with 7:14–25 which is regarded as lying in the past; for the correspondence expressed by ἄρα refers to the present tenses and the present condition described by them in 7:14–25. Since Paul serves God’s law with his mind and inward being although his flesh still serves the sin’s law (7:25), neither he nor those like him are under condemnation from God. The absence of the copula makes the statement exclamatory; it is like a succinct announcement. On κατάκριμα (the ending μα) see 5:16. Οὐδέν is stronger than “no” condemnatory verdict; it is “not a single one” of any kind. Luther’s nichts Verdammliches is not exact, for the sins of the regenerate are certainly “worthy of being condemned,” a truth which the regenerate well understand.

What Paul says is that God utters no verdict of condemnation upon them. The regenerate are numerous, but not a single one draws such a verdict.

The reason for this lies in the significant dative “for those in Christ Jesus.” For all others there is complete condemnation for all and for every one of their sins; for these, complete exemption. Why? Because Christ Jesus wipes out also the sins committed by the justified and regenerate because of the flesh. Daily and richly all their sins are remitted even as they live in daily contrition and repentance. This continued contrition is strongly voiced by Paul in 7:14–25. In marked contrast to 7:7–25 where “I” is constantly used Paul now broadens out to “those in Christ Jesus,” which includes all those who are like himself; so his “I” in chapter 7 was only illustrative.

On the important phrase “in Christ Jesus” see 6:11. Here it is substantivized by the article: “those in connection with Christ Jesus”; the connection is faith. This connection shuts out all presumptuousness, all boldly sinning and counting on no condemnation for such sins. Such conduct would destroy the connection with Christ. In view of what our flesh still does to us Paul’s assurance of no condemnation of any kind is essential. This whole chapter is the great comfort chapter, and it begins with a flood of comfort.

We do not regard this verse as a question just as we did not regard 7:25 as a question. Nor can we accept the view that the answer to this question is the statement that there is some condemnation for those in Christ Jesus. If the implied answer is to be “no,” “no condemnation,” nothing is gained by turning Paul’s emphatic assurance into a question, and such a question would certainly demand more than an implied negative answer. The interrogative particle μή is not used, which indicates that “no” is not in Paul’s mind, and this omission supports the conviction that this is not a question.

Romans 8:2

2 With “for” Paul establishes the fact that not a single condemnation stands against us. For the last time he uses “me” as illustrative of the experience of all believers. It is the more effective since he has revealed in the most open confession how the sin power is still active in his flesh. “The law of the Spirit of the life in Christ Jesus” this “liberated me from the law of the sin and of the death.” The one law cancelled the other law. The aorist “liberated me” is effective: freed me once for all. At the same time it is historical to indicate what actually happened to Paul in the past. He could never have freed himself; God had to do it, and God did it.

This liberation was effected in and with Paul’s justification; but it is not the justification itself that is referred to, as has been supposed, but its effect as liberating as unto a new life. Justification as such has been fully described (3:21–4:25), and from 5:1 onward Paul describes its great results. For this reason he uses “liberated” (as he did in 6:18, 22; note also καταργέω which is used repeatedly), and for this reason he speaks of one law liberating us from another law.

These are not two new laws. As already noted, “law” is the expression of the will that calls for obedience. In reality only one law exists, that of God; for its opposite is lawlessness which is called “law” since it is the expression of the sin power which demands our disobedience to God’s law and of our obedience to the sin’s lawless and unlawful demands. Paul calls God’s law “the law of my mind” (7:23) and sin’s law “the one in my members.” After his liberation Paul freely adopts and obeys God’s law, and sin’s law is deposed and is able to disturb him only from the outside through his members. Here he calls the former “the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus” and declares that this law has superseded “the law of the sin and of the death” and thus has freed him from its control. We know that he means that this has taken place in his inner man (7:22), in his mind (7:23, 25b), and not as yet also in his members although this, too, is to come (8:11, 17). The essential part of the liberation has been achieved, the ransoming of our body will follow (v. 23), hope of it is now making our hearts strong.

The Holy Spirit is thus significantly called “the Spirit of the life in Christ Jesus.” This is the life we live with Christ, which makes us alive (6:8, 10, 13), the end of which is life eternal (6:22, 23). So its creator, the Spirit, is called “the Spirit of the life in Christ Jesus,” for the fact that we have it “in Christ Jesus” is shown in 6:1–11, and is stated in 6:11. This spiritual life constitutes the life of our inner man and animates our “mind” and moves our will to will the good law of God and not to will the base things of the sin power (6:15, etc.).

And now we see what “the law of the Spirit” is: it is his expressed will which animates us freely ourselves to will it in the new life he has created in our inner man. It is no other than God’s law which is not at all changed; but we are changed, made alive unto God and delight in his holy will as this is voiced in his law (6:22, also v. 16). The entrance of this law by means of our spiritual life which is wrought by the spirit “liberated us from the law of the sin and of the death.” “The sin” = the sin power as opposed to “God.” Combined with it is “the death,” the companion of “the sin,” according to the same personification (5:12). This combination brings out fully what has been said regarding the sin bringing with it the death and causing death for us. Their “law” is “the law of the sin,” “that (still active) in our members,” cf., 7:23. Their law wants us to disobey God’s law and thus to destroy ourselves. It is overthrown, ousted, like the law of a tyrant.

It is evident that the Holy Spirit is referred to, of whom this chapter has much more to say. “Of life” is not adjectival, not = “living” Spirit (nor “living” spirit). We combine “the life in Christ Jesus” and not “liberated in Christ Jesus.” “Me” is fully assured textually and not “thee”; it seems that the latter is due to the repetition of the last syllable of the verb: ἠλευθέρωσέσε (for με). The additions to v. 1 found in the A. V. are interpolated from what follows.

Romans 8:3

3 This “for” traces the matter back still farther. It states how it became possible for the law of the Spirit of life in Christ to liberate us from the law of the sin and of the death. It was not the law itself that made this liberating work possible, but it was God’s use of a far higher means, the sending of his own Son by whom he condemned the sin power itself in the very place where it exerts its full power, in the flesh, so that we no longer need to live according to flesh. The sentence is freighted with meaning, every word in it is exactly right and deeply significant.

R. 491 is rather generous when he allows us to construe “the thing impossible,” etc., as a nominativus pendens, or as an accusative of apposition with the object of the sentence (what he means is, condemning the sin in the flesh), or as an accusative of general reference, or as an anacoluthon; but in 459 he rather decides for the first of these four. B.-D. 480, 6 resolves into: “what was impossible for the law,” etc., and construes this as an apposition to the entire sentence, and Zahn adds: an advance apposition which prepares for the sentence itself. We prefer to call this the nominative absolute which is in effect like the genitive absolute; “pendent” and “suspended” are only different terms for the same construction.

But τὸἀδύνατον is not active, “the thing of which the law was incapable” (R. 1096), but passive, which is its regular sense: “the thing impossible.” In the Greek these neuter singulars govern the genitive (B.-D. 263, 2); in English we say “impossible for the law.” From the ἵνα clause we gather that what it was impossible for the law (as a means in God’s hands) to produce was the feat of securing the fulfillment of its righteous demands in us. All that the law could and did secure was an aggravation of our lusts (7:7b), nothing beyond stirring up and making alive the sin power in us (7:9), thus producing “sin’s realization” (3:20; 7:7a) but no liberation from the sin power, no free, happy obedience to the law’s righteous demands. Here we have an answer to all those who still believe that the law is sufficient to restore man, and that all we need is its thorough application: the thing is impossible for the law.

There was no deficiency in the law, it was perfect in every way (7:12, 14), but the medium in which the law had to work was the flesh, man’s sinful nature. And that rendered the law weak, unable to accomplish the very thing to be accomplished, our willing obedience. For our flesh can never be brought to obedience; all that can be done with it is to crucify (Gal. 5:24) and to mortify it (8:13), i.e., to get rid of it. “In that” states the reason for the impossibility, and the imperfect describes the weakness of the law as being a continuous one. Yet legalists and moralists still expect the law to perform what it is impossible for it to do, still think it strong and mighty in the very thing in which it is utterly weak and helpless.

Therefore God used another means. This has been pointed out already in 3:21, “apart from law,” also in 4:13–15. The means which God used worked in the very flesh which rendered the law so weak that it was impossible for it to accomplish the purpose to be attained. God accomplished it “by sending his own Son in likeness of sin’s flesh and in regard to sin” and in this way succeeded so that “he condemned the sin (the whole sin power) in the flesh,” condemned it so completely as to attain his great purpose: our freely fulfilling what the law requires so that we are now a people who walk, not according to the flesh, but according to the spirit. In the words of Jer. 31:33, through Christ God succeeded in putting the law in our inward part, in writing it in our hearts so that he could, indeed, be our God, and we be his people.

“His own Son” is given the place of emphasis before the participle and, like ἴδιος in v. 32, certainly declares the deity of Christ. The aorist participle πέμψας indicates the historical fact and describes the entire mission of the Son. The effort to restrict it to the act of the Incarnation is unwarranted even as this act also had in mind all that followed it in Christ’s mission. In his Gospel John keeps repeating this very participle and tells us that Jesus called his Father “my Sender,” ὁπέμψαςμε.

“In likeness of flesh of sin” is one of those exact Scripture phrases which admit of no change. “The likeness of flesh” would be Docetism, Christ would then be without real flesh; “the flesh of sin” would be Ebionitism, Christ would then have had sinful flesh; but “likeness of flesh of sin” is gospel doctrine, Christ assumed our flesh but not its sinfulness. Paul has just used the term “flesh” (the law was weak through the flesh) in the sense of our corrupt nature; if he had continued in this strain and had written that God sent his Son “in the flesh,” the sense would be that Christ appeared in our sinful nature. This thought he avoids by writing: “in likeness of flesh of sin.” The likeness of the flesh of sin is the flesh without sin, John 1:14.

Ὁμοίωμα is not the act of making like but its result, the likeness (-μα R. 151) produced by the act. Jesus resembled men, all of whom had sinful flesh, but he only resembled them because his flesh was not tainted with sin. Compare C.-K. 796. All three of the nouns lack articles: “in likeness of flesh of sin,” which makes all of them purely qualitative. “Of sin” is an adjectival genitive although it is stronger than an adjective; our versions are not wrong when they translate “sinful flesh.” “Of sin” could here not have been written “of the sin,” for from 5:12 onward the latter denotes “the sin power” itself and not merely “sin” as a quality.

Another reason that prompts Paul to use the noun “of sin” instead of the adjective is he fact that he at once adds “and in regard to sin,” in regard to everything in the nature of sin. All our “sin” is referred to. The A. V. translates correctly, the R. V. interpolates: “as an offering (θυσίαν) for sin” by following the use of this phrase in the LXX: “for a sin offering.” But the context does not warrant such a restriction. “Concerning sin” includes the whole relation of Christ’s mission to sin. The phrase recalls passages like Gal. 1:4, and 1 Pet. 3:18, which include the atonement for sin and also our liberation from sin.

The former has been treated fully in 3:23, etc.; 5:6, etc. It is certainly included here. For, although here the point is our liberation from sinning, our living not after the flesh, this effect of Christ’s work for us rests on the other and is indissolubly bound up with it, namely with the atoning cancellation of our guilt.

By the mission of his own Son in sinless flesh and in regard to sin God did what the law, because of our sinful flesh, could not do; he condemned not only “sin” in general but “the (entire) sin power,” condemned it in the flesh. Read this passage alound and note that “flesh” is the pivotal term. Thus the condemnation rests, not on us who, because of our flesh still have sin (v. 1), but on “the sin,” has rested there since Christ’s mission was accomplished. The aorist, “God condemned,” is historical.

We do not care to become involved in the discussion regarding the relation of the aorist participle to the finite aorist verb. We have two acts and we do not confuse them by saying that the sending was already the condemning. Still less do we make the sending the Incarnation alone so that it was the condemnation of the sin power. The whole mission of Christ was the means for the condemnation. How the death and the resurrection of Christ can be excluded we cannot conceive. The effect of the one act, the sending, was the other act, the condemning, for the means was, indeed, fully effective.

Should we combine: “condemned in the flesh,” or “the sin in the flesh”? The former is correct: the condemnation took place “in the flesh.” Not “in flesh” in general but “in the very flesh” where the sin power exerted its dominion. Paul keeps the connection of Christ’s flesh with our flesh and therefore does not write, “in his (Christ’s) flesh.” By means of his sinless flesh God’s Son joined himself to our sinful flesh and thus enabled God to condemn the sin in toto. Besser asks: “In which flesh did God condemn the sin? Evidently in the flesh of his Son, but for this very reason in all flesh. God sat in judgment on the sin of the flesh of the whole world (John 12:31) when he executed the judgment of condemnation on the sinless flesh of him whom he made to be sin in our behalf (2 Cor. 5:21) and a curse for us (Gal. 3:13).”

“God condemned the sin” (the sin power) as a criminal, and because of that condemnation it lost its right to rule over us. “Condemned” implies a legal procedure that ended in a verdict. In that legal procedure the whole mission of Christ arose against “the sin.” Not only its beginning, the Incarnation, but the whole of it in its completion. The sin lost its right of securing our condemnation because of the guilt of our sins and with it lost its power to control us, to make us keep on sinning as it had done before. Even its efforts to control at least our members (7:23) are already condemned. They are made harmless by our contrition and by God’s pardon while our body still lives on earth and will cease when our body dies and awaits its glorification (v. 11, 17, 21). It is this ending of the control of the sin that is here discussed although it certainly rests on the terminating of our guilt even as our sanctification in life rests on our pardon and justification.

Romans 8:4

4 Verse 3 is objective even as the participle and the main verb are historical. For this reason ἵνα introduces purpose and not, as it might, result. God’s purpose in what he did to the sin power through the mission accomplished by Christ is “that the righteous requirement of the law may be fulfilled in us as those walking not according to flesh (in fleshly manner) but according to spirit (in a spiritual manner).”

In τὸδικαίωματοῦνόμου it is the subjective genitive which determines the sense: “the righteous requirement of the law,” what the law of God has established as the right thing (-μα, a term expressing result). Paul writes, not that we may fulfill, or that the requirement may be fulfilled by us, but that it “may be fulfilled in us,” namely by “the Spirit of the life in Christ Jesus” (v. 2). “Might be” (our versions) is too potential; the aorist means, “may actually be fulfilled.”

The older interpreters think that the fulfillment here referred to is accomplished through the imputation of Christ’s merits, but “in us as walking,” etc., refers to sanctification and not to justification. The divine intention in reality extends to all men so that, justified by faith, they should walk “after spirit” even as the law and the gospel are there for all alike; but here, as so often, the apostle speaks subjectively, to the Romans, including himself since God’s purpose is being attained in them. “In us as those,” etc., τοῖς merely describing “us,” casts no doubt on any of the Romans and does not mean, “in those of us” excluding some. No point can be made of the use of μή as though it were subjective and questioned whether some, perhaps, are really walking after spirit; for this is the regular negative with participles, οὐ being used only very exceptionally. (R. 1136, etc.)

In the contrasting phrases “not according to flesh” and “according to spirit” some hesitate between “spirit” and “Spirit” (A. V.) although the opposite of “flesh” is “spirit”; the decisive point is the fact that the Spirit is not a norm (κατά) as are flesh and spirit. As flesh is the old nature, so spirit is the new which is implanted in us as the new life and the living power when faith is wrought. “Walk” refers to outward conduct but as expressing what is really within us, “the life in Christ Jesus” with its “newness” (6:4).

Romans 8:5

5 Paul brings out the great difference between those who are according to flesh and those who are according to spirit and, after making his readers conscious of the difference, applies its full significance to them (v. 9, etc.). For those who are according to flesh mind the things of the flesh; but those according to spirit, the things of the spirit. For what is minded of the flesh—death; but what is minded of the spirit—life and peace; because what is minded of the flesh (is) enmity toward God. For to the law of God it does not subject itself, neither indeed is it able. Now those who are in flesh are not able to please God. “For” = in order that you may understand more fully this difference between walking after flesh and walking after spirit let me add the following.

“Walking according to flesh” (v. 4) means shaping the conduct in fleshly fashion. It is the result of “minding the things of the flesh,” for this minding regulates our walking. And naturally only “those who are according to flesh,” whose entire being accords with whatever is “flesh,” mind the things of “the flesh,” i.e., of this very flesh with which they accord. They consider and concern themselves with the interests, the objects, and the affairs of their unchanged, old fleshly nature, to satisfy the cravings, the desires, the passions, etc., of this nature. This is the occupation of all their thinking; they are unable to rise higher; the higher world is closed to them.

Paul tersely describes this great class in order to make the opposite class stand out the more clearly: “but those according to spirit, the things of the spirit.” The participle and the main verb are to be supplied. The nature of these accords with whatever is “spirit,” which is here to be understood in the ethical sense like “flesh,” thus of a spiritual quality (κατὰπνεῦμα, no article). Paul puts himself and the Romans in this class. Their justification made them spiritual. Being spiritual, they mind or devote themselves to “the things of the spirit,” i.e., of this spirit and spiritual nature with which they are in accord. This is their occupation, which is on an entirely different plane from those who accord with what is flesh.

Paul here states in other words what Jesus said about the kind of fruit that a good tree brings forth, and the kind that a good-for-nothing tree brings forth, Matt. 7:17, 18. The fruit of the one is edible, the other is not. Throughout these verses the A. V. and the American Committee of the R. V. translate πνεῦμα “Spirit”; they do this already in v. 4. In addition to what has already been said we here state that “flesh” is not a person, and its opposite cannot be the infinite Person, the Holy Spirit himself.

Romans 8:6

6 Φρόνημα is not the mind that does the minding, for this is φρήν; nor is it φρόνησις, the action of minding; but the result of this action: “what is minded,” the resulting thought (see R. 151 on the suffixes -ις and -μα). The genitive “of the flesh” is subjective. What the flesh with its fleshly minding brings forth in the way of thoughts and of acts is, in its last outcome, “death.” “The end of those things—death” (6:21); “the wages of the sin—death” (6:23). This is final and eternal death; the tree that brings forth no good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire, Matt. 7:19. The person who is governed by his flesh is generally unconscious of the death that he is working out for himself by what his minding brings forth; he thinks he is securing an augmentation of life but he merely deceives himself. At times, however, something of the truth dawns on him when, for instance, he feels the emptiness, the vanity of all his attainments, or when his sins find him out by ruining soul and body and the very mind itself. By himself he is powerless against this death and against the flesh which rushes him into it.

In contrast with this Paul sets “what is minded of the spirit.” The entire thought-product of the new nature implanted in us in our justification is “life and peace.” Since “peace” is placed after “life,” the latter means spiritual life. The very minding and all that is thus minded is an evidence of the presence of this spiritual life and at the same time an augmentation and an increase of this blessed life. The fact that this life shall go on into a blessed eternity is reserved for statement in v. 11. Thus “peace” is added (see 1:7 and 5:1), the condition when God is our friend, when all is well with us, this condition leading to the feeling of peace, the enjoyment of harmony, friendship, and communion with God. The more we mind the things of the spirit, the fuller, the richer, the stronger will be our spiritual life, the sweeter and the deeper our peace, and uncertainty and fears will be expelled.

Romans 8:7

7 In v. 4–6 the order is flesh—spirit, and what is said of the latter is the opposite of the former. In v. 7 Paul again begins with the flesh but now chiastically reverses the description by making it the opposite of what he has just said about the spirit and “peace”: “because what is minded of the flesh—enmity toward God,” the opposite of peace. It is not God who has this enmity but the sinner. This whole thought, Paul says, is ἔχθρα, which means personal animosity, hatred, dislike, and opposition directed against God. This explains “because”; it states the reason that the output of the fleshly-minded is death and not life and peace. By his own thought-product the fleshly-minded man cuts himself off from life and peace because all his thought (and thus all his acts) is enmity toward God, the one fount of life and of peace.

How can anything but death be left? By means of this enmity he who is fleshly-minded wills death to himself.

This enmity is explained: “For to the law of God it (namely what is minded of the flesh) does not subject itself, neither indeed is it able.” Every thought-product of the flesh rebels against God’s law. God and his law are in its way, and it hates them and wants them removed from its path. Often the very existence of God is denied; new moral codes are invented, or an amorality is set up in order to allow the flesh all the indulgence that it wants. The γάρ (confirmatory) with οὐδέ only strengthens the thought: “neither indeed.” Some regard “the flesh” as the subject: “the flesh does not subject itself, neither indeed is it able,” but grammatically the subject is τὸφρόνημα, what the flesh thinks. As far as stressing logic is concerned, “the flesh” is no more a personal agent than is its thought.

Romans 8:8

8 With δέ Paul sums up: “Now those who are in flesh are not able to please God.” As was done in v. 5, the persons are again named save that the phrase is varied from “those who are according to flesh” (governed by this norm) to “those who are in flesh” (live and move in this sphere). They are totally unable “to please God.” This expression is chosen because Christians “please God,” and because their free and willing obedience has this great motive to please him who saved them. This subjection of self and of all thought to God’s law as his expressed will is not an unwilling one; such subjection could never please God. Those in the flesh do not merely refuse to subject themselves, they also lack the one motive for acceptable subjection, the desire to please God. This is the motive that moves us. Fleshly men are set on pleasing themselves, spiritual men please themselves by pleasing God.

The fact that the thought of the flesh is not able to subject itself to the law of God, and that those in the flesh are not able to please God, is no excuse, no extenuation, but only makes their case worse. This inability is not by any means the whole story, for the Spirit is sent to free us from the flesh, to make us truly spiritual, to eradicate the flesh-thought and to replace it with spirit-thought. Without excuse in the first place, according to 1:20, because this enmity is not mere ignorance, it is doubly without excuse because God wants to remove it through his Spirit. Even in the Christian the flesh that is left in him can never be brought into subjection to God, to do what pleases him. The flesh cannot be converted, it can and must be mortified (v. 13) and crucified (Gal. 5:24). Note the verbs: “subject itself” and “please God”; voluntarily, by the grace vouchsafed to them, the godly do both.

Here we have the Scripture proof for the utter inability of the natural man in spiritual things. He has no liberum arbitrium, his will is bound. “We believe, teach, and confess that the unregenerate will of man is not only turned away from God, but also has become an enemy of God, so that it only has an inclination and desire for that which is evil and contrary to God, as it is written Gen. 8:21: ‘The imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth.’ Also Rom. 8:7.” C. Tr. 787, 2.—“Likewise Rom. 8:7, 8 … These testimonies are so manifest that, to use the words of Augustine, which he employed in this case, they do not need an acute understanding, but only an attentive hearer. If the carnal mind is enmity against God, the flesh certainly does not love God; if it cannot be subject to the law of God, it cannot love God. If the carnal mind is enmity of God, the flesh sins, even when we do external civil works. If it cannot be subject to the law of God, it certainly sins even when, according to human judgment, it possesses deeds that are excellent and worthy of praise.” C. Tr. 129, 34.

The deduction is therefore beyond question: “The Scriptures deny to the intellect, heart, and will of the natural man all aptness, skill, capacity, and ability to think, to understand, to be able to do, to begin, to will, to undertake, to act, to work or concur in working anything good and right in spiritual things of himself.” C. Tr. 885, 12.—This applies to conversion (887, 18): “Hence it is manifest that the free will from its own natural powers, not only cannot work or concur in working anything for its own conversion, righteousness, and salvation, nor follow, believe, or assent to the Holy Ghost, who through the gospel offers him grace and salvation, but from its innate, wicked, and rebellious nature it resists God and his will hostilely, unless it be enlightened and controlled by God’s Spirit.” All synergism in conversion is therefore to be rejected, for conversion is in toto the gracious work of God through the means of grace, Word and sacrament. Synergism is a perverted idea, and is non-existent.

Romans 8:9

9 After stating the opposite, how those in spirit can and do please God, Paul at once predicates this of his Christian readers. But you, you are not in flesh but in spirit if, indeed, God’s Spirit dwells in you. But if anyone has not Christ’s Spirit, he is not his. But if Christ (is) in you, the body (is) dead because of sin, but the spirit (is) life because of righteousness. Moreover, if the Spirit of him who raised up Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he that raised Christ Jesus from the dead will make alive also your mortal bodies because of his Spirit who dwells in you.

With the emphatic ὑμεῖς Paul places the Romans in contrast with all others who are “in flesh”: you are not in the sphere consisting of what is flesh, in your old unregenerate nature; on the contrary, you are in the sphere consisting of what is spirit, in your new spiritual nature. R. 589 paraphrases ἐν “in the form of” flesh—spirit but obscures the point when he uses the term “form.”

In εἴπερ the addition πέρ intensifies (R. 1154): “if, indeed.” In all charity Paul assumes that all his Roman readers are true Christians, but he does not want to be their judge. They are to judge themselves, and Paul gives them the criterion by which they may easily determine whether they are “in spirit” or still “in flesh.” They need but to examine themselves as to whether God’s Spirit is dwelling in them. This is by no means an intangible criterion. The heart in which God’s Spirit dwells hears and feels the Spirit’s prompting and is moved to follow that prompting by the power which the Spirit supplies. The Spirit is present in his Word, and we hear him in our hearts when his Word is in us and moves us. Only in and through his Word does the Spirit dwell in us, speak to us, impel and control us.

This excludes all Schwaermerei, all autosuggestion, all hearing fictitious, imaginary inward voices. We have the written Word with which to test every inward Word that we have absorbed; and thus the criterion is at once simple, safe, and most sure: see whether God’s Spirit is dwelling in you.

This indwelling is called the unio mystica. It is mentioned throughout the Scriptures and is expressed in a variety of figures. Here it is that of a house or a temple, the Spirit being its owner and inhabitant, making it a fit habitation for himself, adorning it, using it for himself, fending off intruders. Since God’s Spirit is the absolute opposite of the old sin power, it is easy to tell who dwells in the house of your heart. Here Paul writes “God’s Spirit,” presently, “Christ’s Spirit,” making it plain in every instance whether “Spirit” or “spirit” is Paul’s thought.

Beside the positive criterion Paul places the negative. The former is worded personally: “If, indeed, God’s Spirit is dwelling in you” (meaning: as I assume this of all of you); the latter is stated objectively and general: “But if anyone has not Christ’s Spirit, he is not his” (meaning: such a one is surely not to be found among you). But note the simple and the clarifying changes in expression. The Spirit “dwells in us,” comes and makes his abode in us, takes possession of us; now Paul speaks of “having” the Spirit and by having him “being his.” We can surely tell whom we have or do not have, whose we are or whose we are not. Fleshly men do not want to have the Spirit, do not want to belong to him. It is most simple for anyone to determine just who he is inwardly.

Now Paul writes “Christ’s Spirit” to make still clearer whom he has in mind with “God’s Spirit.” No one is to think that “God’s Spirit” is the divine Spirit in general, as so many who deny the deity of Christ and the Trinity conceive him. This Spirit is equally God’s and Christ’s; and by naming him thus, all his saving power is indicated. These two designations also serve as the basis for the Filioque of the Nicene Creed. Making the Spirit equally God’s and Christ’s constitutes a testimonium illustre de S. Trinitate, Bengel. In conditions of reality the protasis naturally has οὐ.

Romans 8:10

10 When he advances the description of the Christian with a further condition of reality, Paul says, “If Christ (is) in you,” and adds this fact to the Spirit’s indwelling. To be sure, the opera ad extra sunt indivisa aut communa so that, where one Person is, the others are also. Christ enters into our hearts with the Spirit. Christ is, however, here mentioned beside the Spirit as being “in you” because it is his “righteousness” by which our spirit obtained the new spiritual life. With Christ in us, “the body (is) dead because of sin.” Νεκρόν is stronger than θνητόν and recalls 7:24: “this body of death.” Διά states the cause of this deadness of the body in which we still exist on earth; it is “sin,” whatever of sin still operates in our bodily members (7:23). This sin puts death into our body.

We may draw the conclusion that, if already here on earth all sin could be swept out of our body and our members, they would not fall into death and decay but would pass directly into glory. The Christian’s body is doomed to death because it is infected with sin; the body, however, passes through this death in order to be cleansed completely of this infection and not in order to be abandoned to it and to be lost.

Μέν and δέ present the two sides. With Christ in us, “the spirit is life because of righteousness.” This is not the Holy Spirit (A. V.) because he cannot be made the opposite of our “body”; it is our spirit, our spiritual nature as this is made new and living in us. And now the predication is even stronger than saying that the body is dead; for it is not merely that the spirit is alive but that the spirit is life, ζωή, the very life principle itself, life spiritual to continue as life eternal. When we look at our poor body we see something “dead,” marked by “the death power” (7:24), mortality (6:12) written all over it. Every ache and pain, every touch of sickness and weakness is evidence to this effect.

Look at the graves of Christians in the cemeteries. But when we look at Christ in us, there we see “life” indeed, not the spark of physical animation (ψυχή) which flickers for a while and then goes out but a new-created inner nature (τὸπνεῦμα) which is itself ζωή, “life” never to end but to pass into glory.

What caused it διά with its accusative “righteousness” tells us. This must be Christ’s righteousness which is imputed to us and not our own acquired righteousness (good works), not even the imputed righteousness plus this acquired righteousness. It is true, indeed, that this section also deals with our sanctification; but all sanctification, every good work, is the product of ‘life” and not its cause. Life is the gift of Christ which is bestowed the instant his righteousness becomes ours by justification through faith. We may even identify faith and life. Before this life is ours, not a particle of sanctification, not a single good work is present; the moment life is kindled, these its products and its evidences begin to appear.

Nor do they feed and increase this life. It is fed by the Word, and the increase of its products evidences only that the life is getting stronger by more and more feeding on the Word. It is δία with the genitive that states means and not διά with the accusative which states reason or cause.

All of this is most illuminating when we recall v. 1. Those “in Christ Jesus” are they of whom Paul says: “Christ in you.” Regarding this double “in” compare John 15:4, 5, 7. God looks at our real “life” which is in Christ, as he is in us, and thus has no condemnation for us. Everything that has been said since v. 1 helps to explain and to make still clearer.

Romans 8:11

11 Throughout chapters 6 and 7 one question has been left unanswered. What shall finally become of our mortal body (6:12)? Only in 7:25 we have a brief, preliminary answer. Now at last we get more information, and to what we here get Paul adds v. 17 and the significant expression used in v. 23. The “if” of reality continues and securely grounds what God will do with our bodies on what he did with the body of Christ.

As so often, δέ adds something that is somewhat different. So here we translate, “moreover.” Our bodies will be raised up to glory. This mortal will put on immortality; death will be swallowed up in victory (1 Cor. 15:53, etc.). This Spirit who dwells in us is the Spirit of God, of God who raised Jesus from the dead. The aorist participle indicates the historical fact; and Jesus was raised up when his dead body was made to come forth from the tomb glorified and reunited with his human spirit which he had committed into his Father’s hands. So strong is the emphasis on this act of God’s that Paul repeats and now substantivizes the aorist participle and calls God: “he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead.” The official name “Christ” is now combined with the personal name “Jesus,” for God raised him up as the one who had completed his great redemptive mission.

Ἐκνεκρῶν occurs twice and = “from death.” It is explained in Matt. 17:10; Mark 9:9; Luke 9:7; John 2:22; Acts 3:16, which see. The body of Jesus was not discarded; in it and by it our redemption was wrought, and its resurrection in the glorified state sealed that redemption as being complete. This Christ with both of his indissolubly united natures now dwells in us, and we are in him in the wonder of the unio mystica. Thus it is that our bodies shall not be discarded. The mortality and the death shall be swept out of them together with the last trace of the flesh and of sin. These mortal bodies shall be made alive by him who raised up Christ’s body, shall be glorified like Christ’s body (v. 17; Phil. 3:21).

We are wholly redeemed, body as well as soul. Having been created as embodied spirits, God will complete his work in us and will bring it to perfection also in our bodies. It is the constant promise of Jesus to the believer: “And I will raise him up at the last day” (John 6:39, 40, 44, 45).

Since textual authority is about equally divided between διά with the genitive: “through his Spirit that dwells in us,” and διά with the accusative: “because of his Spirit,” etc., we are left to other considerations for determining which Paul wrote. Although it is true that the Spirit would be made the Mediator of our resurrection only here while elsewhere this is always attributed to Christ, this Scripture analogy in itself need not be decisive for rejecting the genitive in preference to the accusative; it is, however, re-enforced by Eph. 1:14; 2 Cor. 1:22; 5:5, which call the Spirit the earnest or pledge of our inheritance, the advance guarantee which God will follow by granting all that he thus pledged. For this reason, then, because the Spirit has already been given us as a pledge and already dwells in us God will complete what he has thus pledged to us, “because” must be correct.

Romans 8:12

12 Paul states our obligation and strongly supports it by the facts that ought to serve as motives for our meeting the obligation. The tone is hortative as the address “brethren” indicates, but the wording itself is still didactic.

Accordingly, therefore, brethren, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to be living according to flesh. For if you keep living according to flesh you are about to die; but if with (your) spirit you keep mortifying the doings of the body you shall live.

The deduction is made from v. 10, 11, from the life that is ours through Christ’s righteousness, from this blessed spiritual life that is to glorify even our mortal bodies by means of their resurrection. Paul really puts the question: “Do you want to keep this life and thus attain the blessed resurrection?” And his answer amounts to this: “Then you must not live to the flesh but must put to death what would destroy your life.” The wording is exquisite, especially the verbs: to live in one way and thereby come to die—to cause to die and thereby continue to live.

The statement that we are debtors “not to the flesh” is a sort of litotes and means that we are debtors “to the spirit.” “To live according to flesh” is an epexegetical infinitive (R. 1087) that states what the debt would be, namely to make our entire life conform to (κατά) what is flesh (σάρξ, no article). “To live” according to flesh is stronger than “to walk” according to flesh, purposely so, because it intends to reflect the opposite: “to live according to spirit.” The New Testament, like the Old, has almost entirely avoided the word “duty” (only in Luke 17:10; Rom. 15:27 does it occur in the A. V.). Paul writes that we are “debtors,” people under an obligation, one that was imposed on them, not from the outside, but from the inside, from their very nature as being spiritual. We are of the spirit, led by the Spirit, we are sons, children, heirs, co-heirs with Christ, to be glorified with him. Can we, then, live as though we were none of these, as though we were still entirely flesh, going forward to nothing but death? “Debtors” = people obligated. “To the flesh” with the article = more than “to what is flesh” (without the article), more because it constitutes the entire entity: “the flesh” as a power, i.e., all that properly constitutes flesh.

Romans 8:13

13 The elucidation as to why our obligation does not lie in living according to what is flesh is put in a simple and a striking way by pointing to the result: “For if you are living according to flesh you are about to die.” The condition of reality makes the statement stronger than a condition of expectancy (ἐάν with the subjunctive) would. Expectancy, too, might suggest that Paul expects such a thing regarding some of his readers, which, of course, he does not. What is in Paul’s mind is the fact that the world is full of men who live according to flesh, their whole nature being flesh; it is for this reason that he says to the Romans, “If you live in that way you will die.”

Paul does not write δεῖ with the infinitive: “it is necessary for you to die,” i.e., “you must die”; he writes μέλλετε with the present infinitive, present because it is progressive, one after another will die. Some insert the idea of necessity, “you must and thus will die,” B.-P. 788 adds “infolge goettlichen Ratschlusses”; but this injects the idea of δεῖ. No; God will not make them die; they will die of themselves. This is a periphrastic future and connotes no more than certainty, a certainty that is due to themselves. Living according to flesh heads straight for death, cannot and does not head for anything else, no matter what those who live that way may think. Μέλλετε also implies imminence; for no one knows but what he will die thus perhaps the next day or two: death impends, hangs over your heads like the sword of Damocles. You yourselves make death hang over your head.

“You are about to die” is intensive: to die forever. Living in spiritual death, eternal death waits for you around the corner. We should not fail to note the clashing terms: “if you live you are about to die.” Paul intends to reverse these terms in the next sentence and thus emphasize the clash. Men ever think that they are really living when they give way to the flesh whereas in reality they are heading straight for eternal death. Paul states the fact as being most certain. He states it as a motive, as one that must impel every Christian away from yielding to the flesh.

The motive is most powerful. Who wants presently to end in death? We have become Christians for the very purpose of escaping this death. How, then, shall we live so as after all to run into this death? Glance at the preceding paragraph: “the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus liberated me from the law of the sin and of the death” (v. 2); “the mind of the flesh—death; but the mind of the spirit—life and peace” (v. 6); “the spirit—life through righteousness” (v. 10), the Spirit who raised up Christ “shall make alive” even our mortal bodies. See the pivotal terms that are continued in v. 13.

Instead of stopping to tell us what our obligation is (positive) Paul at once combines it with its blessed result: “but if with (your) spirit you keep mortifying the doings of the body you shall live.” Here we have the simple future tense “shall live.” The difference between this verb and the preceding “about to die” does not lie in the futurity as such but in the point of its beginning. “About to die” means that death will presently come while “shall live” means that the life we already have shall continue forever. “You are about to live” would mean that life would presently begin for us. We already have life eternal (John 3:15, 16, present subjunctive). The spiritual life we now have is to continue forever; we are not to get another life, our present spiritual life is only to enter heaven. The future tense has the full connotation of assurance and certitude: “you shall live”—no if or but about it.

There is a living that brings on death; there is a dying or rather a putting to death (θανατόω) that makes alive and keeps alive. The clash in terms is now brought to its climax. “If with spirit you put to death—mortify in our versions is good—the doings of the body,” i.e., if you keep up this killing, you will keep on living. The implication is: if you let the doings of the body live you will be killing your own selves. Πράσσω and thus the plural noun πράξεις often have a bad implication: “to commit or perpetrate,” “the perpetrations.” It is not necessary to explain why Paul writes: the doings “of the body” after all that he has said about how the sin power still uses our body and our bodily members to war against our spirit and our spiritual life in order, if possible, to destroy it. We have said that “the body” is not identical with “the flesh” even as here Paul does not speak about killing the body as he speaks about crucifying the flesh (Gal. 5:24). “The (bad) doings of the body” are all those doings that are worked out through our bodily members when the sin power solicits and tempts us to yield to the flesh that is still in us and to respond to the evil contacts made in this sinful world by our bodies.

“Body” is in contrast to “spirit.” The body is in a way the ally of “the flesh” since our old nature uses the bodily members for drawing us into sin. Of course, “spirit” is also the opposite of “the flesh.” Yet “spirit” cannot refer to the Holy Spirit (A. V.) but must refer to our own new spiritual nature which, because it is born of the Spirit, is “spirit.” It is incongruous to make the Holy Spirit, the Third Person of the Godhead, the opposite of “the flesh” that is still in us or the opposite of our body as the avenue or means through which the sin power works. The dative πνεύματι is one of means, and the canon cannot be upset that we never use God’s Spirit as a means. He uses us as a means, and not we him. It is our “spirit” with which we kill the evil deeds that the sin would like to bring about by misusing our eyes, ears, hands, feet, etc., and all the desires in our old nature that need the body and are connected with bodily movements and functions in a sinful, tempting world.

In 1 Cor. 9:27 Paul says that he gives his body a black eye (ὑπωπιάζω, “I hit under the eye,” “I knock out”). So here “we kill the doings of the body.”

The combat is a mortal one: we go on living the spiritual life only by killing these vicious deeds that want to destroy this our life. We keep doing it as long as we are in this body that is prone to sin in a sinful environment. We do it πνεύματι, “with our spirit.” This new spirit rules in us and not the old flesh. The more the deeds of the body are killed, the more our bodies become the Spirit’s temple, these bodies that are to be raised to glory (v. 11) in the final redemption (v. 23).

Let us not deceive ourselves on this point. The Scriptures honor the body which God created, Christ redeemed, the Holy Spirit makes his temple, but do so without any illusion as to the dangers that threaten us through this our body. Modern morality would let the bodily desires have full sway as being “natural,” amoral, as “living our own life”; the Scriptures subject our body to our regenerated spirit and make all our members slaves to God (6:13). This alone is “life.”

Romans 8:14

14 With another explanatory γάρ Paul shows what we really are when we live thus. For as many as are being led by God’s Spirit, these are God’s sons. For we did not receive a spirit of slavery again unto fear, but we did receive a spirit of adoption in which we cry, Abba, Father!

Paul now drops the “if” and does not write: “If we are led by God’s Spirit.” He makes his new statement stronger: “As many as—these” (meaning: these alone). But it is not his purpose to exclude any of the Romans as possibly not being led by God’s Spirit, for Paul at once says that they have received an adoption-spirit. From what our own spirit does and is to do the apostle advances to God’s Spirit who enables our spirit to do the Spirit’s will; for when we kill the doings of the body with our spirit, God’s Spirit is leading us. Throughout this chapter Paul writes clearly and always, as here, designates the Spirit in such a way as to distinguish him from “spirit” which is used in a different sense; the A. V. is somewhat confused.

God’s Spirit is the causa efficiens in all that our spirit does. The dative is that of the agent who leads us, and ἄγονται is passive: “are being led,” durative, led all along. Being led involves obedience (6:16, etc.). The truth not to be overlooked is the fact that, although the Spirit dwells in us (v. 9) and thus leads us by inward prompting, he does so only by means of his outward, written Word. To be sure, that Word is also in us (it abides in us, John 5:38), and only in this way does the Spirit lead us by means of it, but it is the written Word that we hold in our hearts, none other. We can verify the fact that the Word in us is the Spirit’s own Word that is leading us by comparing it with the written Word. Only by means of the written Word do we know that the voice inwardly prompting us is, indeed, the Spirit’s own and not some hallucination that is afflicting our mind.

When Paul says, “these (alone, but all of them) are God’s sons,” no less than that, he opens a new vista, an angle he has not touched heretofore, one that is most delightful to every Christian, most rich in motivation for living, not according to flesh, but according to spirit. The point is that God’s Spirit naturally leads God’s sons, shapes their entire conduct. It could not be otherwise. If they were led by some other spirit or were going their own way they could not be God’s sons. One can tell who God’s sons are by noting who is being led by God’s Spirit and who is not thus led.

“Sons,” υἱοί, is the proper word. While it is a close synonym to “children,” τέκνα, and is so used here, “sons” agrees with the idea of “adoption,” “children” with the idea of the new birth (regeneration), and here Paul wants both. “Sons” is opposed to “slaves” while “children” has the idea of dearness. “Sons” also agrees with conduct, for a son should act the part expected of him in relation to his father; a king’s son must act as behooves a prince. “Children” moves in a different sphere, for a child (sometimes it is even made diminutive, “little child”) conveys the idea of dependence, even of immaturity. The differences are not immaterial; each word has its own flavor even in English, and the apostle uses them accordingly.

Romans 8:15

15 We at once see this when he tells the Romans in what respect they are “sons” (“children” is not the proper word until we reach v. 16, 17), namely as being free from a spirit of slavery. “For we did not receive (the English would use the perfect) a spirit of slavery again unto fear.” With its historical aorist this speaks of what happened when Paul and the Romans became Christians and thus sons of God. The spirit which they then received, the new nature and life that God gave them, was not “a slavery-spirit,” the two words being a practical compound; both are anarthrous because they are qualitative: any sort of spirit that was anything like slavery, the genitive being qualitative even as to its case. But the concept is not complete, for Paul has made plain already in 6:16, etc., that our slavery to God is an emancipation and thus vastly different from our slavery under sin and under the law. So he adds: not a slavery-spirit “again unto fear.” That was what the old life was. It was slavery, indeed, because it was full of fear; when our new life is called an enslavement, as when in 1:1 Paul happily terms himself “Jesus Christ’s slave,” it is called so only because of our obedience to God which is a voluntary obedience “from the heart” (6:17) and full of liberty.

Πάλιν cannot be construed with the verb from which it is separated; it modifies the phrase: “again unto fear” (εἰς indicating purpose and result: in order to or so as once more to be filled with fear). This is not the godly fear of sons but the slavish dread of punishment. This dread lurks in the heart of all unregenerate sinners, even in the consciences of the Gentiles, in view of the day of judgment (see 2:16, and note the pagan idea of retributive justice in Acts 28:4). Zahn restricts this fear to Jews and deduces from this restriction his idea that the membership of the Roman church was composed mostly of former Jews. Such a restriction is without warrant. Pagans of olden times as well as atheists in our own suffer from this slavish fear. Blatant deniers of God frantically cry for his mercy when calamities overwhelm them.

We received “a spirit of adoption,” the opposite of “a spirit of slavery,” and in connection with this spirit we cry, “Abba, Father!” The υἱοί, and υἱοθεσία plainly go together, the latter showing how we became “sons,” namely by an act of adoption. “Adoption” refers to the state and here describes our spirit (not God’s “Spirit,” A. V.) just as “slavery” describes the other spirit. Some interpreters refer to pagan ideas that were borrowed from the ancient mystery cults when they seek to explain Paul’s “adoption.” C.-K. 1103 says: “The Greek language offered Paul only the word and not the thought, which did not agree with the Greek conception.”

The deduction is also unwarranted that “adoption” is not to be understood as resting on a declaration of God’s will concerning us but is an operation of God in us which alters us inwardly. Neither “spirit of adoption” nor v. 23 (which refers to our future in the adoption) alter υἱοθεσία so as to shut out from that concept the divine act of placing us as “sons,” an act that is involved in the forensic verdict of our justification. God gave us his Spirit because he adopted us as sons (Gal. 4:6), and not vice versa, he gave us his Spirit and therefore adopted us as sons.

“In which” (spirit) means that our crying “Father” is connected with our possessing this spirit which is marked by God’s adoption of us as his sons. “Father” befits “sons” but not slaves. And those alone are sons of God whom God has rightly, we may even say legally, adopted. There is no other way of becoming a son of this Father. And these sons alone have this spirit of adoption, this inward new life and its spiritual relationship which is conscious of sonship, of its new, blessed right (“the entrance by faith into this grace in which we stand,” 5:2) to draw near to God as our Father.

Κράζω means “to yell.” Perhaps “to exclaim” is the idea to be expressed here. We do not see how audible crying can be excluded, yet how congregational praying can be included is equally hard to see. Bengel comments: sermo vehemens, cum desiderio, fiducia, jure, constantia. The word suggests a boy yelling, “Father, father!” when he is in distress.

“Abba, Father!” Instead of recalling the Lord’s Prayer with its “Our Father who art in heaven,” this word recalls Mark 14:16, Christ’s prayer of distress in Gethsemane, together with Heb. 5:7, which tells us that this prayer was offered up “with strong crying (κραυγή allied to κράζω) and tears.” The appositional nominative ὁΠατήρ is quite regular after the vocative Ἀββᾶ; it is the doubling of the Aramaic and the Greek terms for Father that is so exceptional. We find it also in Gal. 4:6.

Various Hebrew or Aramaic expressions were taken over by the early Greek church, but this one was retained in a duplicate Aramaic and Greek form. Jesus himself certainly spoke Aramaic in Gethsemane and thus did not add the Greek “Father” to the Aramaic “Abba.” It would seem that Mark, who alone tells us that Jesus cried “Abba,” added ὁπατήρ for the sake of his Greek readers. This had been done before when the Gethsemane story was told. Thus “Abba, Father” entered the language of the church and became a fixed liturgical expression by combining the word that was dear to the Jewish ear and tongue with its Greek equivalent.

We certainly are debtors, not to the flesh, by being God’s sons, having received a spirit of adoption, crying Abba, Father.

Romans 8:16

16 Nor is this all in regard to our obligation. The Spirit himself testifies together with our spirit that we are God’s children; but if children, also heirs—God’s heirs and Christ’s joint-heirs if, indeed, we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him.

Here there is double testimony for our relation to God: that of our own spirit when it cries, “Abba, Father,” and thus furnishes a sample of our attitude toward God; secondly, that of the Holy Spirit himself when he speaks in a thousand places of the written Word which apply to us as believers in Christ Jesus. Here again we should not think of immediate testimony apart from, outside of, or above the written Word. All such supposed testimony is Schwaermerei, the evidence of not only a spiritual but also a mental pathological condition. The Spirit, indeed, puts the Word into our heart and in this way testifies in us; but we can ever verify that Word and testimony by the Scriptures.

This testimony of the Spirit is thus objective, one that reaches us from the outside and from another person. Two witnesses are required to establish a matter in any court, no less than two; and this is not merely the law, a legal rule, this is the legal rule because it is normal and right even as Christ declares in John 5:31–37. We ourselves need and must have a second witness. The world is full of self-deluded men who think they are this and that when they are completely mistaken. The Jews were sure that Abraham was their father, and that God was their heavenly Father, yet Jesus proved to them that the very opposite was the fact, John 8:33–44. How do we know that we are not equally or similarly deluded?

It is because of the Spirit’s testimony in the written Word. Passage after passage applies directly to us who believe.

But may not this written Word be misread, misunderstood, perverted? It may, indeed. Any true testimany may be abused; our lawyers constantly do that in court. But true testimony remains what it is in spite of the abuse to which it may be subjected. For this very reason the Spirit’s testimony is written and also written so as to speak with a mighty, cumulative voice, so that it is most arbitrary to pervert it, so that it ever testifies against all perversion. God’s children have no difficulty in understanding that testimony. It is axiomatic: “He that is of God heareth God’s words” as they testify, John 8:47.

Thus we get the vital assurance “that we are God’s children.” It is claimed that this testimony of the Spirit comes first, and that of our own spirit second, and that the latter rests on the former. This is a theoretical reflection. Paul has the factual order. God converts, justifies, adopts by the Word as a means of grace, as an effective and operative power. Not until then does the Spirit use the testimony of the Word in a second function of that Word, namely as assurance. First the work wrought in us testifies as to what it is; secondly, the Word that wrought this work testifies as to what it has wrought.

Thus the two testify together. And their joint testimony is that we are God’s children; ἐσμέν is placed first since it implies existence and has the emphasis. And now Paul writes τέκναΘεοῦ, but not in contrast to υἱοὶΘεοῦ but in amplification: “sons” as adopted persons, yea, “children” born in regeneration. Both are true, and together they join us to God so that we are surely debtors to him to live, not according to flesh as before, but according to the new spirit born in us.

The asyndeton should not be overlooked. Verse 16 is added without a connective, and in the Greek, which loves to tie all its sentences together with connectives, this lack of one acts like an arresting finger to draw our special attention to what is thus added.

Romans 8:17

17 Paul at once brings out the implication: “but if children, also heirs.” In Gal. 4:7 we have: “if a son, also an heir.” This statement has been used to wipe out all distinction between “sons” and “children,” but this is unwarranted reasoning. Here in Romans Paul could have continued with a statement regarding sons as heirs. Sons inherit by virtue of sonship, and our son-ship rests on adoption; children inherit by virtue of birth, and our birth is effected by regeneration. Here Paul uses the latter when he pronounces us heirs; he certainly does not deny the former, nor does he obliterate the distinction that sons inherit legally, children naturally. The latter serves the thought best in the present connection.

The next two statements are beautifully balanced with μέν—δέ: “God’s heirs and Christ’s joint-heirs.” Both genitives denote possession: God has us as his heirs, Christ has us as his joint-heirs. The first is not objective: we do not inherit God. We must hold to the Biblical conception of inheritance, in other words, seek the tertium comparationis. We inherit the promise. What God promises to his children is their inheritance. So Canaan was the inheritance promised to Abraham. Here the idea of a testament and of the death of the testator is not introduced as this is done in Heb. 9:16, etc. What is God’s, and what he has promised us, is our inheritance upon which we shall enter presently, As heirs we still wait for the transfer of our heritage to us.

“Christ’s co-heirs” makes Christ the Supreme Heir (Matt. 21:38; Heb. 1:2). He has already entered upon the inheritance. When Paul calls us Christ’s co-heirs, we are not placed on the same level with Christ, for he is the Heir irrespective of the fact that we become God’s children and thus co-heirs with him, while we can become co-heirs, not by getting the inheritance independently as he did, but only as sharing in the inheritance which he has obtained. Yet this is true: he obtained the inheritance only in order to make us his co-heirs, only to have us share it with him. It is great, unspeakably great, to be heirs of God; and this greatness is made still more stupendous by calling us fellow heirs of Christ who is God’s own Son. An inheritance fit for the Son is to be ours.

Shall we now live so as to jeopardize our receiving this inheritance? When Paul makes Christ the Heir, let us note that his human nature made him the Heir, but, to be sure, as joined to the divine nature (Phil. 2:9, etc.). It is through his human nature that we are made joint-heirs of his. 1 John 3:2, 3.

On εἴπερ see v. 9 and note that it does not question the fact expressed (as if some of the Romans were remiss) but emphasizes it: “if, indeed, we suffer with him” as we most certainly do. We are already in a joint relation with Christ as “joint-heirs” states. This union with him is manifested in the very feature which made him the Supreme Heir and won the inheritance for him, in which we are now joined with him, namely his suffering. The difference, of course, remains that his suffering was vicarious while ours is not and cannot be. Our suffering has no atoning power even for ourselves; to think so is only derogatory to Christ’s suffering and insults its sufficiency. Yet we suffer jointly with him and because of our connection with him, 2 Cor. 4:10; 1:5, etc.; Phil. 3:10; 1 Pet. 4:13; John 15:18, etc.

These are the sufferings that come upon us for Christ’s sake, and not those mentioned in 1 Pet. 2:20; 4:15 which are brought on us by our own sins, nor the common creature sufferings with which the next section deals. Paul is speaking of the cross we bear (Matt. 10:38; 16:24; Gal. 6:12), and we must not call all our sufferings a cross.

We join in Christ’s suffering “in order that we may also be glorified with him,” aorist to indicate the one act, and passive because God will glorify us as he glorified Christ. We are to become partakers of his glory. This includes both the body and the soul, the soul when we die, the body at the last day. Of the latter Paul has already spoken in v. 11. Here is the complete motive for our being debtors to live, not according to flesh, but for our joyfully submitting to the Spirit’s guidance.

The Consolation of Hope and Divine Assurance, 8:18–39

Romans 8:18

18 We come to the final result of justification by faith as it is depicted by Paul. This is the great consolation section of Romans.

It presents a world view that is at once so lofty and so profound as to leave behind all non-scriptural conceptions. The whole creature world is made to depend on what God does with his children. Going back to the fall of Adam which plunged the creature world into vanity and corruption, the Christian hope is made nothing less than the fulfillment of the expectation of even this creature world. In the midst of a groaning world we pray, but one far greater, the Spirit himself, makes our prayers what they should be. For above this vast whole, so sadly deranged, is the hand that makes all things work together for good to us according to his eternal purpose, the realization of which is sure. Paul is stirred into asking triumphant, challenging questions, the answer to which is Christ and the love from which no power whatever is or will be able to separate us. With this triumphant assurance Paul closes.

Here there are eyes that do see the realities, a mind that penetrates to God’s design working in them all, and the faith that moves with sure tread to lead us to God’s own goal with certainty. Revelation expressed in Inspiration, and both divine!

For I reckon that the sufferings of this present period are not worthy to be compared with the glory about to be revealed in us.

“For” = in order that you may understand the better what has just been said about our suffering together with Christ and our also being glorified together with him. All of this will become clearer when we view ourselves in the midst of the entire suffering creature world which longs for our glorification at the last day. Do not occupy your mind exclusively with the little suffering which you individually endure but see this vast creature world groaning, and we with it, but having all its hope centered in us as the sons of God, centered upon us and on our deliverance. This is a mightier thing than the deliverance of us Christians only; and the more we see its vast proportions and the way in which God has bound up the whole creature world with us, his sons, the truer, surer, greater our own hope and assurance will become. “I reckon,” Paul writes and expresses his own personal conviction with the purpose of implanting the same conviction and insight into his readers.

From our suffering together with Christ, from the cross, the suffering we endure for Christ’s sake, Paul turns to our suffering in general, much of which is not for Christ’s sake, some of which is due only to our own sins and our faults which necessitate chastisement (Heb. 12:4–11), some of which is due to evil men, and some of which is incidental to our earthly existence. The only kind of suffering in which we glory (5:3) and can glory is that endured for Christ’s sake. The attempt has been made to restrict Paul’s present statement to these sufferings because of the statement made in v. 17 that “we suffer with him,” but Paul goes much farther since he also writes “the sufferings of this present period,” all of them, of whatever kind they may be. We need comfort and assurance not only when we suffer for Christ but also and often much more when we endure other suffering. So also our suffering for Christ cannot be connected with the suffering of the creature save only as a part of all our suffering. We have παθήματα used in another sense in 7:5; here it denotes all the evil experiences that come upon us (M.-M. 473). Καιρός is a definite, short period and does not mean the world age (αἰών) or just time in general (χρόνος); it is the brief period of our earthly life. Of course, Paul is thinking of Christians only, for others cannot compare their sufferings with some future glory.

“Not worthy” is placed emphatically forward, and this adjective is construed with πρός, a construction which we must circumscribe when we translate it into English. The idea of the word ἄξιος is that of weight. Place all the sufferings into one pan of the scale and the coming glory into the other pan; the pan with the former flies into the air as if it were holding only a few feathers. When sufferings and glory are held against (πρός) each other, the sufferings amount to nothing, no matter how many and how severe they are. This is not an overstatement but simple fact. When we are in the midst of sufferings we often give them too much consideration, fail to look at the coming glory, and lose our balance and our sense of proportion.

Here we have Paul’s corrective. He does not need to state why all the weight is in the glory and none in the suffering. He is not comparing durations, one that is short and the other long; for νῦν is not balanced by αἰώνιος, “eternal,” but only by μέλλουσαν, “coming.” In comparison with all possible suffering, the glory as such is stupendous, not only in duration (in heaven time shall be no more), but in every respect. It is comparable to the glory of Christ which is beyond our present imagination. Some place an emphasis on μέλλουσαν, but there can be none since this participle is placed between the article and the noun. The emphasis is then thought to imply certainty: “certainly about to be revealed in us”; or strong futurity, or close futurity.

Every Christian knows that this glory is not as yet here, and its certainty has been fully stated in v. 11 and 17 (5:2–11). The participle expresses unemphatic futurity and nothing more.

Μέλλουσανἀποκαλυφθῆναι is a punctiliar periphrastic future participle, punctiliar because of the aorist infinitive, thus pointing to one great future act. Εἰςἡμᾶς = “in us” (A. V.) and not “to us-ward” (R. V.) or any other rendering that suggests motion. When R. 535 speaks of a “pregnant” construction he reveals that he is not altogether free from the older view which always made static εἰς “pregnant” (i.e., rest after motion); nor is εἰς here doing service for the dative, for “about to be revealed to us” would make the glory referred to that of God. Some stress “revealed” to mean that the glory is already in us and is finally revealed as when a statue is unveiled. “We shall be glorified” does not make that impression (v. 17), but rather that the glory shall be bestowed upon us. 1 John 3:2. This glory is our inheritance (v. 17), and while it is ours, it is ours only in hope and not yet in possession.

Romans 8:19

19 With another γάρ Paul sheds fuller light on this coming revelation of glory in us and on the expression “the sufferings of the present period” over against which he sets this coming revelation of glory. Both the sufferings and the glory involve the whole creature world. For the creation’s watching with outstretched head is waiting it out for the revelation of the sons of God. This translation is awkward because the Greek words contain so much. Here we have three terms that are compounded with ἀπό in one short sentence. Ἀπό plus κάρα (head) plus δοκέω (in Ionian “to watch”) = watching with head stretched away from (ἀπό) the body like one leaning far out to get the first glimpse of something coming into sight. Then ἀπό plus ἐκ plus δέομαι, the second preposition making the verb mean, “to wait it out” (Thayer), i.e., to keep waiting until the expected actually appears. The words are strong, indeed: the head stretched forward in intense watching, waiting and never tiring or desisting until the thing waited for appears.

This is predicated of the κτίσις, “the creation,” a term with -σις like ἀποκάλυψις, denoting action (the act of creating); but here it is concrete: the creation as reflecting the act, i.e., the creature world. This abstract term used concretely is comprehensive: “all creation,” and is thus better than τὸκτίσμα or its plural (a term with -μα, result, R. 151) which denote the created thing but lack the comprehensive idea. Here the context limits “the creation” to the irrational world of creatures, excluding angels, godly men, and also ungodly men. This whole section disregards the ungodly. The tremendous thought being unfolded here is that all God’s inferior creation was from the start bound up with man, was not independent but wholly dependent. And now, since the fall, the creature world, in its ultimate destiny, is bound up, not with the ungodly who shall perish in hell, but with the godly and with their coming revelation of glory in heaven.

“The revelation of the sons of God” is the revelation just mentioned, “the glory about to be revealed in us.” And here “the sons of God” (v. 14) is the proper term to be applied to us and is better than “the children of God” (v. 16) because “sons” more clearly shows our distinction as compared with the creature world—sons, not slaves; sons for whose service the creation was made.

Who told the creation about the sons of God and about this hope of theirs? Some minds find only poetical imagination in Paul’s words. Some use the word “mystical,” but this word is inexact; see 6:4 where mystical language is explained. “Mysterious”—yes; but that means only that our minds do not fully penetrate the fact. Here the great fact which appears already in Gen. 1 and runs throughout all of Scripture and is prominent in Rev. 21:1 comes fully to view: the unity of God’s creation, Christ the head of all things in heaven and earth (Eph. 1:10), we as God’s sons supreme in and with him.

Romans 8:20

20 How the creation comes to be waiting is made plain by another γάρ: For to vainness the creation was made subject, not of its own will, but because of him who made it subject on the basis of hope that also the creation itself shall be liberated from the slavery of the corruption for the liberty of the glory of the children of God.

A calamity came upon the whole earthly creature world when its crown and head, Adam, fell; then the creation was made subject to vainness. The emphasis is on the dative which is placed forward for this reason. The creation was subject to man before the fall but not subject “to vainness.” It was subject to man for true effectiveness, to accomplish the purpose for which God had created it. This noun is derived from μάταιος, “vain” in the sense of failure to reach the proper end, to accomplish the intended purpose; it is distinct from κενός, “vain” as having no inner content, “empty” in itself. The creature world was compelled to fail in its divinely intended purpose of glorifying God by serving man in a perfect way.

The world is full of sinners, full of ungodliness; God’s wrath is revealed against it (1:18–32). How can the creatures who were made for man serve him in the way in which God intended when he made them for man? They are abused at every turn for “vainness.” The purposes and objects for which they are used are failures, utter failures. Man eats the fruits of the earth and dies; that was not what these fruits were made for. Man uses the animals, and his life ends by perishing; that was not God’s intent. This “vainness” has entered the creatures themselves so that they even help to hurt and to destroy man. In countless ways all is against him: “Cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life,” Gen. 3:17.

The creation was made subject to vainness “not willingly,” not by an act of its own will, it was not like Adam who willed to sin against God. Man is evil because of his own guilt, the creatures have no guilt. Man suffers justly, the creatures unjustly. Our restoration is pure grace, that of the creature world is simple justice. Its subjection to vainness and failure was “because of him who made it subject,” because of God who so arranged and ordered it when man fell from God. This was not an arbitrary act on the part of God but was due to the original connection of the creature world with man.

It was made with the purpose that he should live in it and be served by it. When man became sinful and perverted, how could he remain in a perfect creature world, how could it fulfill God’s original purpose toward him? God might have removed man, but then what about all this creation made for him? Then it, too, would be purposeless. But God intended to extend grace to man, to give him time to repent, to be restored; so he subjected the creation to vainness and let man continue, and the whole creation ever reminds him of his sin and his guilt.

So it is man’s sin that caused this entire frustration of and derangement in nature, but it was not the ultimate cause. God is the one who subjected the creation to this vainness for his great ulterior purposes. The agent of the second passive ὑπετάγη is the agent of the active τὸνὑποτάξαντα and the agent of the future passive ἑλευθερωθήσεται (v. 21). Man cannot be made the agent; God made subject, God will liberate. It is argued that the participle refers to man: “because of him who made it subject,” i.e., man; but then man would also be the subject of the two passive verbs, which is unlikely. The argument that God could not be the reason or cause (διά with the accusative) overlooks the fact that God’s act is made the reason, for the participle predicates this act.

And that disposes of another objection, namely that God is not the opposite of “not willingly,” and that ἀλλά calls for an opposite. Certainly, God is not the opposite, but God’s act is: not by an act of the creature—on the contrary, by an act of God. Nor does the phrase “because of him that made it subject” reproduce the phrase used in Gen. 3:17, “for thy sake,” i.e., because of Adam; Paul’s phrase reproduces the whole of Gen. 3:17, the entire curse by which the creation was subjected.

Romans 8:21

21 “On the basis of hope” should be construed with the main verb. This will also make it refer automatically to the participle which expresses the same action. God subjected the creation to vainness, but this would have been a senseless act if this subjection had been without hope. The creation was intended for man who was made its head and crown. To subject it in vainness to fallen man without hope would have meant that no hope existed for man with whom the creation was bound up. But by his grace God opened a mighty hope to fallen man, and that means that this hope extended also to the creation that was made for man.

This becomes clear in the statement of this hope: “that (ὅτι, not, “because,” A. V.) also the creation itself shall be liberated from the slavery of the corruption for the liberty of the glory of the children of God.” The liberty of these children shall include also the creation made for them. The original intent of God when he created a perfect creature world for perfect man shall be carried out in spite of man’s fall. God’s creation is not a grand failure. Great was the destruction, greater is grace and the restoration; the grace abounded, exceeded (5:15). “Also the creation itself,” the creation on its part, is emphatic and at once distinguishes it from the children of God and places the creation beside them. “Also” states that these children shall be liberated, and that the creation will share that liberation. And again, this liberty is that of the children, and for this very liberty “also the creation itself” shall be liberated. Doubly, and thus emphatically, the creation and the children are joined together in the great final emancipation, yet the creation is only in second place, is only throughout dependent on the children.

As in v. 14 and 16, so here in v. 19 and 21, we have “sons of God” and then “children of God.” These terms are synonymous and yet each designation has its own connotation. The glory shall be revealed in us as sons, as those who stand so high, are above all slaves or servants; the liberty of glory shall be ours as children, as those who are so near and dear to God, whom God cannot and will not leave in any kind of alien bondage. see v. 14 and 16. These designations are not contrasted; each is a complement of the other. Liberation is the proper term because it is the opposite of being subjected. “Shall be liberated for (into) the liberty” is not pregnant but emphatic, the noun is placed beside the verb, and this verb has a phrase because this verb cannot take a cognate object; the effect is the same as the addition of a cognate object (like, “to die the death,” “to live the life,” etc.). Liberation, liberation!—who is able to express all that lies in this hope? Think of all the struggles for the little liberations which are constantly going on and of the jubilation when this or that liberation is achieved. Then think of the absolute, perfect, eternal liberation which includes the whole creation and all the children of God.

“Vainness” = “the slavery of the corruption”; its opposite is “the liberty of the glory.” The terms are articulated because all of them are most definite: not some slavery, etc., but the specific universal one of which Paul is speaking. “Slavery” is this subjection to vainness, slavery, indeed; “liberty” is its opposite. The genitives “of the corruption” and “of the glory” are appositional, the one defining the slavery, the other defining the liberty. We cannot well make them different genitives, the second being qualitative: “the glorious liberty,” A. V. following Luther. Corruption is the worst slavery, glory the highest and the most perfect liberty. Corruption explains vainness by stating what is at the bottom of the failure of the creation, namely decay and death.

Its opposite is incorruption; but instead of using this negative term Paul uses the positive term “the glory” which was used in v. 18 and is now emphatic because of its repetition. This is the eternal glory, the effulgence of perfection that never declines or ends.

It belongs to the children of God. They alone are the children (sons); such a designation does not apply to the creature world. It shares in this liberty only because of its connection with these children. No hope of liberty and of glory exists for the ungodly; hence the future of the creation is not bound up with them, and not a word is said here about them.

So the creation, too, will at last be glorified. What Paul says about it in this section settles the question raised by other passages: Ps. 102:27; 2 Pet. 3:10; Rev. 20:11; Isa. 34:4; Luke 21:33; Job 14:12, as to whether the creature world will finally be annihilated. “The liberty of the glory” cannot have a double meaning: blessed, eternal glory for the children of God, annihilation for the creation. To call the latter a liberation is an odd use of language. It has been well said that not the κόσμος itself will pass away but only the σχῆματοῦκόσμουτούτου (1 Cor. 7:31), the form of this present world. The fire mentioned by Peter must be the fire of purification. The “new heaven and the new earth” mentioned in Rev. 21:1 are not νέος, newly created and never having existed before, but καινός, new in contrast with old, different from what heaven and earth (Gen. 1:1) formerly were. Rev. 21 states that the present separation of the Holy City from the earth shall end in a union of both. “Behold, I make all things new, καινά.” The teaching of the entire Scripture is to the effect that God’s plans are never defeated, that he does not replace but restore.

Many questions regarding details confront us in this connection. Will the animals, the plants, the insects be raised to life? What about the noxious creatures, the bacilli, for instance? We have no answers. Wait! It is vain to operate with our logic in a field that is infinitely above all logic.

Do we know what it means to create? As little do we know what it means to make all things new. Do we know what our glory will be? As little do we know what this glorified earth will be. The great hope arises from the divine assurances and promises. Let no little vain reasonings dim that hope!

He who made Paradise for Adam will make heaven and earth new, far beyond Paradise, in the consummation. For “the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them” (Rev. 21:3) in a way that is beyond what Paradise ever knew.

The speculations and the hypotheses of modern science, philosophy, and theology regarding the brute origin of man and regarding an evolution that is in progress but does not have even a hypothetical goal, are mistaken in the light of Scripture. It is a pity that some men are inclined to take them seriously.

Romans 8:22

22 Two γάρ follow, the first substantiating what Paul says about the sad condition of the creature world, the second (v. 24) what he says in regard to hope. For we know that the whole creation is groaning together and suffering birth pains together up until now. Moreover, not only (the creation) but also we ourselves who have the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves in ourselves are groaning, waiting out adoption, the redemption of our body.

This is nothing mysterious but something that all Christians know from their own observation. Paul has only interpreted this common knowledge. “All the creation is groaning together” in a great symphony of sighs (Philippi, Seufzersymphonie); multitudinous is this suppressed agonizing of the whole creature world under the distress which man’s sin and death have brought upon it. A million things are wrong, and all nature, especially animate nature, shows it. In his sermon for the Fourth Sunday after Trinity Luther (Erlangen Ed. 9, 94, etc.) graphically describes this condition, and others have done the same.

But Paul has a second verb which deepens what Christians observe: “suffering birth pains together.” This is not only pain and woe but travail, i.e., pains that end by bringing forth something, they are like a woman giving birth to a child. In John 16:21 Jesus uses this figure in an elaborated form. The groaning is not to end by subsiding when death sets in but to end when a new condition comes out of it. The two σύν in the verbs do not indicate mutuality with us but the joint action of the collective creation itself. “Up until now” contrasts with the future deliverance and glory and brings out the long time of waiting which continues up until the very present moment. We still hear the groaning and the travail.

Romans 8:23

23 Δέ = “moreover” and adds something different, the difference being that, while we, too, groan, we have the first fruits of the Spirit, in this respect being unlike the creature world. Although we are so much higher we still groan much as does the creation around us. Zahn revises the reading so as to have it mean: “but also we ourselves, having the first fruits of the Spirit ourselves within ourselves, are groaning.” His object is to avoid the thought that we groan within ourselves by claiming that nature for the most part groans in silence and inwardly while we Christians voice our groaning in our prayers. The reading that states that we groan in ourselves has the best textual authority. By adopting it we by no means understand Paul to say that we groan inaudibly while the creature world groans audibly. He does not say how the creation groans or how we groan.

As for audibility or inaudibility, what difference does it make? The creature world, however, has no immortal soul, no reason, and above all no spiritual life, and thus does not groan “in itself,” while we groan “in ourselves,” in the depth of our new spiritual being.

Even the ungodly do not groan in this way, for Paul emphasizes the fact that we groan thus “as having the first fruits of the Spirit.” By the Spirit we are reborn, by his help we recognize the full reality of this world’s “vainness” and “slavery of corruption,” and, on the other hand, “the liberty of the glory” awaiting us. It is thus that we groan. The ungodly cannot attain this inwardness. The participial clause is neither concessive: “though we have,” etc., nor causal: “because we have”; it is descriptive: “we as having the first fruits of the Spirit.” The dropping out of the second καί and thus combining “having within ourselves,” results in a trivial thought: for where else but “in ourselves” could we have the Spirit?

Ἀπαρχή = first fruits. “At the Passover, on the morrow after the Sabbath, a sheaf of green barley (which is earlier than the wheat) of the first fruits of the crop was waved before the Lord. At Pentecost, fifty days later, two loaves of wheaten bread.… Besides these national offerings the law required that the first of all ripe fruits and liquors should be offered by individuals. A cake of the first dough baked was to be a heave offering. The first fruits of the oil, wine, and wheat were to be offered to Jehovah for the benefit of his priests as his representatives. The Talmud fixed on the sixtieth as the least to be given of the produce, a thirtieth or fortieth as a liberal offering.” Fausset and any Bible Dictionary. Used figuratively, “the first fruits” signify the assurance of much more to follow, namely the revelation of the glory or the liberty of the glory. In effect, “the first fruits of the Spirit” = “the earnest of the Spirit in our hearts,” ἀρραβών, the first down payment which secures the rest of the payment in due time (2 Cor. 1:22; 5:5; Eph. 1:14).

The genitive in “the first fruits of the Spirit” is not partitive; for the Scriptures never divide the Spirit so that we have a section now and all the sections at last. This genitive is appositional: the first fruits are the Spirit. The entire Spirit is given to us now, and this gift is the assurance that in due time we shall receive the glory even to the ransoming of our body.

Paul leaves no doubt on this score, for he adds: “waiting out adoption, (namely) the ransoming of our body.” The participle is temporal: “while waiting out” (this verb occurs also in v. 19). What the anarthrous “adoption” means is shown by its apposition “the ransoming of our body.” To wait out adoption (ἐκ in the verb) does not mean to receive it for the first time (v. 15 speaks of this reception); it means to wait until its full consummation arrives; and the apposition shows what this consummation is. When a child is adopted it does not at once possess and enjoy all that adoption assures; as an adopted child it waits until these things arrive in due course. Thus adoption, for instance, makes the child an heir, but it must wait out the time to have the inheritance turned over to it (v. 17).

It is especially “the ransoming of our body” for which we wait out the time because this is the climax of what is assured us in adoption. When the body, too, is raised from the dead (v. 11) and joined in glory to the soul (v. 17), then all that adoption includes will be fully in our possession, and there will be nothing beyond that is still to be added. When Paul calls this “the ransoming” of our body he uses a term that is most apt in every way. Deissmann, Light from the Ancient East, 331, shows that a ransom is involved, and that the term was used in connection with the manumission of slaves. He makes it clear that the idea of a price is not “a pictorial detail of no ulterior significance” but “a necessary link in the chain of thought.” We must, therefore, discard the definitions which reduce the term to a deliverance without ransom. In his elaborate essay on this term Warfield, Christian Doctrine, shows that in English the word “redemption” has lost too much of what “ransoming” conveys and ought to convey as a translation of ἀπολύτρωσις.

We may call its use here eschatological because it refers to the resurrection. The price paid for this final part of our deliverance is the same blood of Christ which paid all our other ransom. See the connection with Christ in v. 11. The word fits exactly the idea of “slavery of the corruption,” for slaves often received manumission by ransom. It equally fits the liberation mentioned in v. 21; in fact, Deissmann points out that ἀπολύτρωσις and ἀπελευθέρωσις, “liberation,” go together. The body is in slavery even after it enters the grave, for corruption, decay, and death still hold it; the resurrection liberates it “in the liberty of the children of God.” The exactness and the richness of the term “ransoming” as used in the present connection have seldom been fully perceived.

24, 25) This waiting out the time Paul explains (γάρ) in all simplicity. He reverts to the phrase “on the basis of hope” used in v. 21. For the (object of) hope were we saved. But (an object of) hope seen is not (an object of) hope; for who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, by means of patience we wait it out.

The readings vary, but fortunately not the sense. The dative troubles many. It is not a dative of means. We are not saved “by means of hope” but by means of faith. If hope is taken in an objective sense, means becomes more impossible; for that which saved us must have been there when it saved us, yet the thing hoped for lies in the future. Manner is likewise excluded, Philippi’s hoffnungsweise, for this omits the article. “Hope” is objective throughout as our translation indicates; Paul himself contrasts “what is seen” with “what is not seen” even as he speaks of “hope seen” (all are objective).

The dative is that of the indirect object: we were saved when we were first saved “for the hope,” the great object of our hope, the one of which Paul has been speaking (hence the article), the glory about to be revealed, the liberty of the children of God (v. 18, 21). Thus Stellhorn.

see 1:16 on σωτηρία and the corresponding verb. When our rescue occurred, when we were first justified by faith (the aorist to indicate the one past fact, historical), this was not an act that was at once to lift us into glory, it was “for this hope,” to give us this glory as the object of hope in all due time. So in this life “we walk by faith and not by sight,” 2 Cor. 5:7. We are heirs, but not yet in possession (v. 17). As to faith and hope, the former embraces salvation as it is present, the latter embraces salvation as what is yet in the future. Hope rests on faith; faith always bears hope with it.

Now it is self-evident: “the hope seen is not hope,” i.e., once the object of hope is seen, it ceases to be an object of hope. Once the hoped-for glory, liberty, resurrection of our body are before our eyes, hope turns to realization.

“For who (still) hopes for what he sees?” Note the translation of the A. V. and the R. V. margin. The rhetorical question answers itself. “But if we hope for what we do not see,” that is hope indeed, for then “through patience we wait it out” (the same verb and the participle occurring in v. 19, 23). This is now our situation, and as far as the body is concerned, it will be so until the last day. Ὑπομονή (brave perseverance) is again the proper word in view of our own groaning amid the present painful conditions, “a brave, quiet remaining under” them until “the liberty of the children of God” arrives. But what a vastness our hope thus assumes in Paul’s presentation by involving, as it does, “all the creation” (v. 22)! Only the ungodly are excluded.

Romans 8:26

26 Moreover, in like manner also the Spirit lays hand to our infirmity. For, what we shall pray as necessary we do not know; but the Spirit himself intercedes with groanings unutterable. And he who searches the hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, that according to God he intercedes in behalf of saints.

Δέ adds something of a different nature; and “in like manner” says that it corresponds to what precedes. Just as we wait out the time in brave, patient perseverance, so the Spirit helps our infirmity. We are not left alone in our hopeful waiting, weak as we are. Some connect: the creation groans—we groan—and in like manner the Spirit groans. But this paralleling of the Spirit with the creature and with us is rather fanciful. Paul connects 1) our patient waiting out the time with 2) the Spirit’s help, and the link is our weakness.

“The Spirit” is here presented in his work as the Paraclete (John 14:16) who is called to our side to aid us. Paul says, “He lays hold helpfully on our weakness,” σύν, along with us he takes hold of the burden in order to help us, ἀντί, facing us, “as if two men were carrying a log, one at each end” (R. 573). Each preposition adds something to the picture (R. 565). “Our weakness” is plain from v. 18–25: we do not suffer and wait as we should; we do not show the patience and the hope that we should. Some define the weakness on the basis of the following and make it weakness in praying for what is necessary; restriction is carried still farther to weakness in praying for eternal blessedness. But prayer is the general means for obtaining help in all our needs and is introduced here for this very reason. The trouble is not only our weakness but also our inability to use our great means for obtaining strength as we should. By taking hold with us (σύν) over against us (ἀντί) the Paraclete helps us, indeed.

Γάρ states the reason for the Spirit’s support in our praying: “For, what we shall pray as necessary we do not know.” This implies that we do pray, but that we do it ignorantly and do not always pray for the thing that is necessary. The indirect question with the subjunctive is deliberative: one or more ask themselves, “What shall we do?” The article τό before this question only marks it as the object of “we do not know.” It is worth noting that Paul includes himself. Construe, “what we shall pray as necessary” (literally, “according as it is necessary,” R. 722) and not, “as necessary we do not know.” The latter would rest too much emphasis on the modifier by placing it before its verb; nor would anything be gained by this construction, for not to know as necessary is after all not to pray as necessary, and vice versa.

The Spirit at once steps in but not merely in order to help out knowledge, which would be a rather slow process of help and in this life would at best always leave us with much ignorance. Especially when we are amid suffering we ever incline to pray only for its removal because we deem that “as necessary”; waiting out the time in patience so often seems too difficult. Even Paul prayed three times to have the thorn in the flesh removed, and the answer he received shows for what he should have prayed. These deficiencies in our prayers “the Spirit himself” makes good; “he intercedes,” the present tense, iterative, at any time when it may be needed. The verb expresses a complete thought and does not need “for us” (A. V.).

This double compound occurs only here and in later ecclesiastical writers; in v. 27 we have the shorter form. Etymologically the verb means that the Spirit “happens on” us and acts “in behalf” of us, “bending over to protect” (ὑπέρ), R. 629. The preposition does not mean aufs beste, for no degree is indicated. We translate “intercedes.”

As a true Advocate and Paraclete the Spirit finds us in our weakness, takes our part, speaks in our behalf in a way in which we could not pray in our own behalf. Here is proof that we have the intercession of the Spirit in addition to that of Jesus. Thus we have a double comfort. It is the Spirit who works all that is spiritual in us, also our praying, and thus not only knows our inner condition but is most deeply concerned about it.

The dative of means, “with groanings unutterable,” has received some fanciful interpretations. Paul does not write ἀλάλοις, “unuttered,” i.e., dumb or silent, but ἀλαλήτοις, “unutterable,” which cannot be expressed in any language so as to convey their meaning. The idea that some of these groanings were uttered in the psalms cannot be entertained, for then they would not be “unutterable” as Paul states. The dogmaticians such as Quenstedt III, 259 thought that this intercession of the Spirit with unutterable groanings signifies that he causes us to pray and to groan and helps us to pray aright. But this cancels “unutterable” and does not interpret it. Later writers state that the charisma of tongues was a speaking in non-human language and either identify these “groanings” with this non-human language or conceive of them as a parallel to it.

This idea about non-human language is discussed by the author in connection with his interpretation of Acts 2:4–11 and 1 Cor. 12:10, where this subject is treated at length. Some think that Paul here speaks of congregational praying, but this is an unwarranted restriction.

The dogmaticians are right: the Holy Spirit does not and cannot groan; these groans are ours. Philippi puts it mildly: “To assume that the Spirit groans without using our own spirits is devoid of sense and of Scripture analogy.” Anthropopathism has its limits. The gate is opened wide to Schwaermerei and fanaticism when we are told that we can hear the Spirit’s groaning within us and can distinguish it from our own. Teach this and note the awful pathological results! These “groanings” come from our own hearts even as Paul says that “he who searches the hearts” knows what they mean (v. 27). They are neither uttered nor utterable; they do not rise to our lips in inarticulate sounds.

Since they are locked in our hearts, sound is unable to convey them in any way, “we ourselves within ourselves groan” (v. 23). Underneath all our uttered prayers of distress and all our audible groans are these deeper ones that remain in our spirit. These, even these, since they are the deepest of all, the Holy Spirit utilizes in making his great and effective intercession for us. Christ in heaven intercedes for us from above, the Spirit also intercedes from our inmost heart.

Romans 8:27

27 “He who searches the hearts” is a designation that is repeatedly used with reference to God; the Father sees in secret (Matt. 6:4), knows and tries heart and reins (1 Chron. 28:9; Ps. 7:9; Prov. 17:3; Jer. 11:20; 17:10; 20:12; Acts 1:24; 1 Thess. 2:4; Rev. 2:23). This designation applies to the Father only when these groanings are ours; if they were those of the Spirit, we ought to have “he who searches the deep things of the Spirit” or some similar designation. The Father knows “the mind of the Spirit,” his intercessory intent and object when he uses these our secret groanings and not any language or words added to these groanings to give them utterance or intelligibility. The argument is untenable that, if God is to understand the mind of the Spirit, the groanings must be the Spirit’s and not our own; why should God not know the Spirit’s mind when he uses our inmost groaning and adds his intercessory meaning to it?

Ὅτι is explicative: “namely that” and not causal: “because,” our versions. The fact that the Spirit intercedes “in a godly manner” (κατὰΘεόν) is not a reason why the Heart-searcher knows the Spirit’s mind, for he knows all things, those that are “in a human manner” (κατὰἄνθρωπον) as well as the others. To say what Paul says is not stating a reason. Paul tells his readers a most blessed fact as to what the Heart-searcher knows about the mind of the Spirit, namely this that, although the Spirit uses our human groanings in his interceding, he does so gottgemaess, “according to a manner comporting with God.” To have him use our poor human groanings, which cannot even be uttered in any way, in such a divine manner and to be assured of this, is comfort, indeed.

Instead of having ὑπέρ in the verb itself we here have it in an attached phrase. When we translate into English we are unable to distinguish the double from the single compound and must render both “intercede.” The phrase “in behalf of saints” (see 1:7: those made holy by the atoning merits of Christ) has no article: “in behalf of such as are saints” (qualitative) in spite of all the weakness yet adhering to them. Since they are dear to God as “saints” under the Spirit’s sanctifying power, the Heart-searcher knows what the Spirit does when he in a godly manner, one befitting God and thus surely agreeable to him, hears the Spirit’s intercession for them. One might fear that intercession made in the poor human manner will not be efficacious with him who searches our faulty hearts; this fear disappears when the Spirit steps in in our behalf.

Romans 8:28

28 Despite their infirmities the Christians need neither to fear nor to be discouraged. More than this, they need not be dismayed or depressed in regard to anything that may happen to them in the course of their lives. According to an eternal purpose God has already given them the highest gift; he will add all others as they are needed. So the eternal goal will certainly be reached.

Moreover, we know that for those loving God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to purpose; because whom he foreknew he also foreordained to be conformed to the image of his Son in order that he may be the Firstborn among many brethren. Now, whom he foreordained, these he also called; and whom he called, these he also declared righteous; and whom he declared righteous, these he also glorified.

To the intercession of the Spirit, which aids us in our weakness in this distressed world, δέ adds another mighty comfort. As the object shows, “we know” means to know by means of the knowledge of faith and not by mere intellectual investigation. The great fact, “that for those loving God all things work together for good,” is a fact known only to Christians from the Word. If it were not for this Word, they, too, would think that only too many things work for their evil instead of for their good. The dative is placed forward for the sake of emphasis: “for those loving God,” the substantivized participle describing these people: they have this quality and character. Regarding ἀγαπᾶν and ἀγάπη see the verbal used in 1:7.

In our literature it is the word for the highest type of love, that of comprehension coupled with corresponding purpose. see John 3:16, and 21:15, etc. It is more than φιλεῖν, the love of affection. Those who “love” God through experience know him and all that they have in him, and their heart seconds all his blessed purposes.

We may ask why Paul introduces this designation immediately after having named them “saints.” We do not seek the explanation in what precedes, in what is said about our “weakness,” or think that we are “saints” because we are “lovers of God.” We are saints, not because of our love, but because of what the love of God did for us; ἅγιοι are the ἡγιασμένοι, those whom God has sanctified by the blood of the Lamb by justification (3:24, etc.). And it is evident that the weakness still adhering to us does not constitute us lovers of God.

This designation is due to what is now predicated of these lovers; it does not refer to the preceding but to the present context. The Scripture analogy (for instance, 1 Cor. 2:9; James 1:12; 2:5) shows that, when the bestowal of God’s gifts is mentioned, the relation of love is emphasized. Even in the last judgment our works of love are brought forward. So here the thought is simple and appropriate: God’s loving providence takes perfect care of those who love God. The idea is just as natural as that a father should keep his own beloved and loving children. Of course, this their love is born of their faith. The love is there because we are children of God by faith in Christ Jesus. And their love does not earn the divine care which is the gift of grace.

Beginning with v. 27 and continuing through v. 30, Paul uses the third person. He is speaking objectively. In v. 29, 30 he uses gnomic aorists which are timeless. Not until v. 31 does he again change to the first person, “we.” We shall see how vital this fact is for understanding this section. Here we have the facts as such, as they apply universally, at any time, at all times. Their application to us, to Paul and to the Romans, follows in due course (v. 31, etc.).

“All things are working together for good,” all of them without exception operate together to produce “good” in the sense of what is beneficial for God’s lovers. This includes every kind of painful experience in Christian lives, all those that press groans from our lips and make us groan inwardly in unuttered and unutterable distress. Some of the things that Paul has in mind he states in v. 38, 39. The Old Testament story of Joseph is a striking example of the mysterious and the wonderful way in which God makes the evil done to us eventuate for our good. Another instance is the story of the persecution precipitated by Saul. It scattered the great congregation at Jerusalem to distant parts, it seemed to be a calamity but served only for the good of the church by planting it in a hundred new places to flourish more than ever.

Σύν in συνεργεῖ causes a discussion. One naturally understands this to mean that all things “work together,” work hand in hand, one thing working in mutuality with the rest to bring about good for God’s lovers. And, in fact, this is what we find in our experience. When we look at the final beneficial outcome for ourselves, the strangest, often the most contradictory occurrences seem to have cooperated to produce this unanticipated result. Of course, God’s hand was behind this cooperation; the good result is due to him. Objection is raised to this obvious and satisfactory meaning.

Mutuality is canceled; we are pointed to συνήδομαι, “I rejoice in” (not with) the law (7:22), where mutuality is not expressed; the verb is understood to mean, “all things redound for good,” work in the interest of God’s lovers. We find no gain in this thought. In hundreds of instances σύν does express mutuality, and there is no good reason for denying that it has that force here.

On insufficient textual authority the subject ὁΘεός is inserted: “in every respect (πάντα, adverbial accusative) God works together for good with those loving God.” Or, since our working is out of line: “God makes all things work together” (M.-M. 605, alter the sense of the verb for the sake of the subjects); or: God verhilft, etc., (B.-P. 1262); or: God “helps”; or: all things “help” (C.-K. 433). By reducing the meaning to helping, the latter erases all that is distinctive in the verb and substitutes a general idea. This is the less fitting because “help for good” (can things help for evil?) is incongruous, especially in the present passage. Nor does ἀγαθόν mean salvation, Heil; being anarthrous, it refers to any good, any benefit that is valuable for God’s lovers. The fact that the ultimate purpose of all the good providences of God is our salvation should not lead us to overlook the accordant intermediate purposes and the fact that “for good” names these.

In apposition to the dative, “for those loving God,” is the appended designation, “for those being (who are) according to purpose called ones.” Since it is appended to the sentence, this apposition is the transition to the following sketch (v. 29, 30) of all the divine acts that underlie God’s providence so that all things cooperate for good to us. In fact, this apposition is a summation of v. 29, 30, or rather these verses are an expansion of the condensed appositional summation. From what we are as lovers of God, Paul advances to the divine acts by which we have been made what we are, God’s purposing and his gospel call, which leads Paul to unfold the whole chain of acts involved.

The purpose of the apposition is not a correction of the expression “those loving God” as though Paul fears that we might think that our love merits God’s care of us. Our love is the blessed effect of God’s purpose and call. The one involves the other. The thought of an opposition between them is unwarranted. Those who truly love never dream of a mercenary merit when they love. This very idea is excluded by ἀγαπᾶν, the love of real comprehension coupled with concordant purpose. But for our complete comfort we should know the divine acts underlying the love God has produced in us. These acts reveal the ultimate ground of God’s provident care of his lovers.

The verbal κλητοί is not used as an adjective (1:7) but as a noun; it is a designation like ἅγιοι, πίστοι (these two occur in this order in Eph. 1:1), ἀγαπητοί, ἐκλεκτοί, etc. We have already noted that, while in Matt. 20:16; 22:14 κλητοί is used with reference to those who simply hear God’s gospel call irrespective of whether they accept it or not, in the epistles the term is used in the pregnant sense and includes the acceptance; compare 1 Cor. 1:9; 1 Pet. 2:9. The verbal is passive and involves God as the agent who called and the gospel as the divine means and the power by which he called.

Πρόθεσις, “purpose” (in 2 Tim. 1:9, “his own purpose”) is the act of setting something before oneself. The preposition in this compound word is not temporal. What we are by God’s call of grace accords with a purpose formed by God. The result (we, called people) tallies with God’s purposing (words in -σις denote action) and with what his purposing set in motion so as to attain this result.

The phrase κατὰπρόθεσιν lacks the article and is not the equivalent of the adverb “purposely” which denotes manner; for κατά states concord, and the noun the norm of the concord. There is a divine purpose, and this underlies all else pertaining to our salvation, including all saving results attained, the intermediate such as “the called” and the final, the saints in glory. Everything tallies with this governing and normative purpose. In substance the word means Selbstbestimmung (C.-K. 1173); Ratschluss is not as good. This is the purpose of God’s ἀγάπη, of his love of comprehension coupled with corresponding purpose; his prothesis is filled with this ἀγάπη.

This explanation should be sufficient, but this phrase has been misinterpreted. Calvin uses it to posit a difference in the call extended to men: one call is “according to purpose” and converts irresistibly and is extended only to the elect, another is “not according to purpose” and never converts and is extended to the non-elect, the reprobate. But the latter is not a serious, true call but only a sham and a deception. According to Calvin the eternal destiny of every man was fixed by an absolute, mysterious decree prior to God’s purpose which elected a few and reprobated the rest; why should there be a purpose back of the call of the latter?

A later view identifies “purpose” and “election” as being “substantially” the same and thinks of “election” as being the unconditional selection of a certain number of persons from the great massa perdita for faith and for heaven. Paul would thus speak of “those called in accord with election.” But what shall we then say of the call extended to the rest? The call is universal and identical for all men. In all without distinction its intent and purpose is faith (mediate result) and final glory (ultimate result). In this its universality, identity, and identical intent it accords with God’s purpose. No modification of the κλῆσις or of the κλητοί in any Scripture word, phrase, or clause makes the call of some men different from that of other men.

In making this claim we join the great chorus of our Lutheran fathers with whom many others agree. In the clause “being the called according to purpose” the restriction does not lie in “purpose” but only in the pregnant οἱκλητοί, which is used in the epistles as a designation of those who have not only received the call but also have been won by it. The reason that the rest were not won in no way or to no degree lies in the call or in the divine purpose but in the wicked human will which rejects the call and the purpose.

Romans 8:29

29 Ὅτι states the reason that all things work together for nothing but good for those who love God, for those who are called according to purpose. This reason is contained already in their designation, “the called according to purpose,” but Paul draws it out and details it in full because every part of it is so convincing and thus so comforting in the face of ills. He speaks objectively: οὕς, which already implies a τούτους, and then (v. 30) in full οὕς—τούτους. All of the aorists are equally objective, gnomic, and timeless (R. 837) and are arranged in a chain which B.-D. 493, 3 calls a Klimax, and the relative clause in each new sentence repeats the preceding main verb.

The claim that Paul speaks subjectively, “from the standpoint of the Romans” as being people who were called and justified, is untenable. The objectivity argues against this claim. The last clause, “these he also glorified,” literally answers this claim, which is made in the probable interest of a novel theory regarding predestination. Overlooking the objectivity of Paul’s presentation, this claim advances to the declaration that the Scriptures never speak about predestination except in a subjective way and to the assertion that therefore we, too, dare not speak of it except in a subjective way. Matt. 22:1–14 is also purely objective. The latter is taken care of by saying that it only “describes the elect.” See the author’s exposition of the passage in Matthew.

Romans 8:29, 30 is accepted as being one of the great sedes doctrinae of predestination and is an example of how mighty doctrines are incidentally introduced. For the main thought of this passage is God’s provident care, and the main object of it comfort and assurance in regard to that care. In fact, predestination is not at all elucidated, for only the verb for it and no more is introduced. Even the question, so fully answered in Matt. 22:1–14, as to why only a few are “elect” is not treated here, for our attention is here fixed only on those who are the called, i.e., “those whom he did predestinate.” It is well to note these things. These gnomic aorists need no subject because God alone can be the subject. Regarding the insertion of ὁΘεός in v. 28, which would carry this subject over into v. 29, 30, see that verse.

Προγινώσκειν = πρό plus γινώσκειν = to know in advance = “to foreknow.” The addition πρό does not change the meaning of “to know,” it only dates it. The same is true with regard to προορίζειν, to ordain in advance, to predestine. How far back πρό reaches is not debated, for all agree that these divine acts go back to eternity. The kind of knowing referred to in the clause, “whom he foreknew,” need not be in doubt in view of passages such as the following: “The Lord knoweth the way of the righteous,” Ps. 1:6; “You only have I known of all the families of the earth,” Amos 3:2; “I never knew you,” Matt. 7:23; “I know my sheep, and am known of mine,” John 10:14; “The Lord knoweth them that are his,” 2 Tim. 2:19.

It is well to note that γινώσκω = a knowing that places the knower into a personal relation to the one known, which is not the case with οἶδα, the act of mere intellectual apprehension (C.-K. 388). It is plain that in his omniscience God knew, knows, and foreknew all men. When Jesus says regarding the wicked on judgment day that he never knew them, and when in contrast it is so repeatedly said regarding the Lord and regarding Jesus that they know the godly, we at once see that in all these statements “to know,” γινώσκω, is used in a pregnant sense, which usage our dogmaticians well define as noscere (nosse) cum affectu et effectu, “to know with affection and with a resultant effect.” The dictionaries would do well to adopt this definition, because nothing that is more exact and to the point has been produced. Now προγινώσκειν dates this affectionate and effective knowing back into eternity. This is the whole story.

We add one point. This knowing is divine and occurred in eternity. All of time was spread out before the omniscient mind of God, and throughout its extent God knew every one of his own in advance, knew him affectionately and effectively, already in eternity knew him as his own from the moment of the inception of his faith until his death in this faith. This excludes all those who believe only for a time and become apostate before their death. For in eternity, before the mind of God, all time and all that occurs in time were finished and complete. God’s foreknowing cannot be restricted to any point in time; it covers all time in one act. In regard to the wicked, in eternity God knew about them (οἶδα) in advance but no more; his knowing could not embrace them in affectionate effectiveness (γινώσκω).

When our dogmaticians add the intensification cum affectu et effectu to this knowing and foreknowing they remain within both linguistic and Biblical bounds. The error begins when these bounds are exceeded. Calvin says regarding “whom he foreknew”: “It is an adoption to the estate of children, whereby he has separated us forever from the rejected.” Others: Ueber welche er einen Vorbeschluss gefasst hat, an advance decree; C.-K. 255: zuvor erkueren, to choose in advance; M.-M 538. who have only six short lines mention Hort regarding 1 Pet. 1:20: “designate before.” In one way or in another the word “foreknow” is extended too far, either in plain language or in implicit language. The classic use of γινώσκειν with the force of “to judge,” to hand down a judicial decision, also does duty although it is admitted that προγινώσκειν is never used in this sense. The statement is made that pagans had no conception of such a juridical finding made in advance by God and hence have no examples of this juridical use.

Two points are at issue. We cannot agree with the assertion that προέγνω designates einen Willensakt Gottes, einen goettlichen Ratschluss. Both linguistically and doctrinally the knowing cannot be eliminated and an act of willing, a decree, be substituted. We are told that when God in eternity willed this appropriating decree, the persons concerned were the same as all the rest in the massa perdita, that it is a “mystery” as to how God came to will only regarding these and not also regarding the rest. God’s omniscience in “foreknew” is thought to see only the total depravity; “foreknew” means that he appropriated some of these so depraved people, this appropriation being the cause of their salvation, their eventual salvation being thus, and thus alone, omnisciently known. This view of “whom he foreknew” needs no refutation. “Foreknew” ever remains eternal advance knowledge, a divine knowledge that includes all that God’s grace would succeed in working in us. It has been well called “the eye of predestination.” God did not close his eyes, then reach into the massa perdita to will the appropriation of a few, then open his eyes again and see them finally saved in heaven.

The older dogmaticians interpreted: quos credituros praevidit, “whom he foresaw as believers.” This is objected to by those who make “foreknew” an act of the will as described above, the more so because it established the doctrine that we are elected intuitu fidei, an abbreviation for “in view of the merits of Christ perseveringly appropriated by faith.” Our fathers are charged with “impossible linguistics,” with “opening door and gate to all arbitrariness in exegesis.” This is plain injustice. What a pity that those fathers are not here to reply to these charges with their clarity and their vigor! We are glad to point to the many notable recent interpreters who second these fathers in supplying a predicative expression with “whom he foreknew,” which states as what God foreknew them.

Those who object to this view must reckon with other passages: in John 10:14 Jesus “knows” certain persons as “my sheep,” and these know him as their Shepherd; in Matt. 7:22, 23 the persons are fully described to whom Jesus says: “I never knew you!” This is also true with regard to other passages. The fathers and these later exegetes simply interpret in order tersely to bring out the meaning of Paul. Those who object to this method apply this same method in many places in their own exegesis. They apply it even right here but do so covertly. When they convert “foreknew” into a Ratschluss or decree they direct this act of the will of God toward men as being what kind of men? As men who are still in utter depravity! But for this mysterious decree these men would have remained in their depravity.

When it is said that “foreknew” is complete in itself, this is correct when the verb is properly understood. No predicative accusative is needed because this foreknowledge of effective affection covers everything in those so foreknown, i.e., all God’s work of grace in them from beginning to end. Those who supplied a proper predication, whether they thought the verb needed it or not, should not be condemned. But this view that “foreknew” is complete in itself becomes a different matter when it is used for the purpose of turning the word into a mere act of the will which mysteriously appropriates a few from the massa perdita.

“Foreknew” and “foreordained” cannot be synonymous. The entire five acts are different, each succeeding one rests on the previous one. Προορίζειν = “to foreordain,” and προορισμός = “foreordination.” These are the regular Biblical terms for “to predestinate” and “predestination.” This is an act of the will; by it God in eternity fixed, settled, and determined that those whom he already recognized in love as his own should be such as are conformed to the image of his Son. Those who regard “foreknew” as an act of adoption, election, or however they word it, make no more than a formal distinction between “foreknew” and “foreordained,” no matter how they strive to augment this distinction. Paul’s weighty statement would end in virtual tautology.

Συμμόρφους is the predicative accusative, and it may be followed, as here, by the genitive or, as in Phil. 3:21, by the dative. We need no final infinitive: “to be” conformed because this thought lies in the verb: “he also foreordained to be.” But we should not overlook μορφή in the adjective “conformed.” This conformation to which we are predestined involves the reception of a form that is not a mere outward resemblance but one that is native to the essence. 1 John 3:2. Hence also we have εἰκών, imago, and not ὁμοίωμα, similitudo. The former is always Abbild and implies a Vorbild. We are to be copies of Christ, the original: “conformed as the copy of the Son.” The word implies derivation, Trench, Synonyms. This conformity is not attained until we reach the state of glory: “shall be glorified with him” (v. 17); “the glory about to be revealed in us” (v. 18, 19); υἱοθεσία as we still await it (v. 23).

There is, indeed, a conformitas crucis which we attain in this life, and some would combine it with the conformitas gloriae to be attained at the last day. But Paul is pointing his readers from their sufferings to their comfort amid trials and to their assured hope, and this means to their coming glory.

The doctrine of predestination has caused much trouble in the church. Because it

was thought to involve many profundities, men have submerged themselves in self-made gulfs of darkness, thereby losing or almost losing the clear and precious gospel. The discussion of this has caused many preachers to steer shy of the whole subject as being one that is quite beyond them. But let us approach the subject in the simplicity in which Paul presents it. He wrote for simple Christians who also easily understood them. Back of our call is God’s purpose of grace and salvation; only in accord with it are we the called. Already in eternity God knew all the called, knew them in his love; and then he also destined them to be finally made like his Son. Amid our present trials this is comfort, indeed. That is nothing to entangle us; that is a sermon that ought to be preached often.

Paul even tells us about God’s ultimate purpose: “in order that he may be the First-born among many brethren.” Some think that “the First-born” refers only to the pre-eminence of the Son who has become incarnate. Some go beyond this to his deity and say that he was the essential Son long before we became the adopted sons and by adoption his brethren. But we are Christ’s brethren only through his incarnation; we are conformed to his image only in so far as he is man and now glorified as man. “First-born,” however, cannot refer to the incarnation as such, to the Son’s birth from the Virgin Mary, for not by means of such a birth are we his brethren. Whatever the relation that is implied in Col. 1:15 and Heb. 1:6 may be, here, where our glorification is the subject, Col. 1:18: “the First-born from the dead”; Rev. 1:5: “the First-begotten of the dead”; Acts 26:23; “the first that should rise from the dead” (1 Cor. 15:20) constitute the parallels. In the resurrection unto glory he became for us “the First-born,” we shall become conformed to his image, and so he shall have many “brethren.” The risen Christ called his disciples “brethren” (John 20:17) because they were justified; but here “brethren” adds to the justified also all the future glory when Christ shall acknowledge and God shall receive us as the Son’s “brethren,” who are raised through him and like him to glory.

Romans 8:30

30 For this reason Paul sketches the steps that lie between the predestination and the glorification: “Now (δέ), whom he foreordained, these he also called; and whom he called, these he also declared righteous; and whom he declared righteous, these he also glorified.” When “these” is written out and resumes the relative subject clauses, it is emphatic. So greatly is God concerned with “these” that he does the great acts here recorded. If it be asked why God did not foreknow, foreordain, call, justify the rest, the Biblical answer is found in Matt. 23:37 and similar passages: God did not exclude them, but despite all that God could do they excluded themselves. “These he called” includes the acceptance of the call; and it in no way excludes the extension of the same call with the same power of grace to the rest. see Matt. 22:14 and the entire parable regarding the treatment which the call receives.

“These he declared righteous”; δικαιοῦν is sufficiently explained in 3:24, where the passive occurs. “Justification is that act of God by which he, of pure grace, for the sake of the merits of Christ, pronounces a poor sinner, who truly believes in Christ, free from guilt and declares him just.” This is an excellent definition. The act is forensic, takes place in heaven the instant when the call kindles faith.

“These he glorified” crowns the whole (v. 17, 18). This final aorist distresses the commentators and will always trouble them until they realize that there is a gnomic aorist, R. 837. All of these aorists are alike. This last aorist is not proleptic, neither are the other five. “These” means all the saved down to the last one to the end of time. How many of them are as yet not born! Why, then, are not also the other aorists, “he called,” “he declared righteous,” proleptic in regard to those who will yet be called and justified?

Past, present, and future are not to be considered in this connection. The fact that some have already been called while others shall yet be called, some are already justified, others shall yet be, some (their souls) are already glorified, others shall yet be, and that the bodies of all await glory—this element of time regarding tenses is eliminated by the gnomic, timeless aorist just as the subject “these” also eliminates it. Consult what has already been said on the objectivity of these statements in connection with v. 29.

Here there is no Standpunkt such as the moment when Paul wrote these words, or when the Romans read them, or when we now read them. Then Paul should have written a future tense. But if he had done so he should also have changed οὕς—τούτους into “us—whom.” For then he should have made subjective what in a far grander and in a far more effective and comforting way he made wholly objective. Paul sees God’s whole work complete, complete from eternity to eternity, all “these” from the first saint to the last, from God’s foreknowledge ere time began to the glory of these saints when time shall be no more.

Romans 8:31

31 Not until he reaches this point does Paul apply the objective facts subjectively. Now “we” sets in, and not until now. Here are the deductions we must make from the objective facts for our great comfort. A climax is reached in v. 30, and now even the diction rises grandly. Erasmus exclaims: Quid us-quam Cicero dixit grandiloquentius? “What has Cicero ever said more grandiloquently?” Poor Cicero never had a subject like this nor a mind so filled with spiritual light. The product of Inspiration is the greatest proof for Inspiration.

What, then, shall we say to these things? If God for us, who against us? He who did not spare his own Son but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not also with him graciously grant to us all things?

The rhetorical question arouses heightened attention as to what Christians are bound to say to the great things (facts) just stated, πρός, “facing,” “in view of” these things. They certainly cannot stand and lament as though theirs is a sad lot. They must be ashamed of all doubt or complaint. A second rhetorical question that is added without a copula states the whole matter in a nutshell: “If God—for us, who—against us?” The condition of reality is fulfilled. God is for us; hence the challenge: “Who—against us?” The implication is not that no one is against us but that it makes not a particle of difference who is. Bring on all the world, a thousand foes, unnumbered ills, God is greater, mightier, and is on our side.

Romans 8:32

32 A second question expounds the “if” clause, God’s being for us; the next verses expound anyone’s being against us. This question is linked right into the preceding one by making its subject a relative clause, this clause letting the subject stand out boldly, almost like an independent nominative: God—“he who even spared not his own Son but,” etc., ὅςγε, der ja. We have no particle similar to γέ to attach to the relative, nothing so delicate, and hence generally omit it when translating. R. 1148 explains its force: “at least,” or in other connections, “this much”; he assumes the latter force here, we the former, the concessive touch: he who as every Christian admits.

What God has done seals what he will still do. The idea is not that he has already done the greater and thus will add the less; no, it is stronger than that: the greater with which he began makes it impossible for him not to add the rest which is only less great. “How shall he not graciously grant?” means that there is no way so that God could avoid this further grant, seeing what he has already granted. The argument is not merely from the greater to the less but a statement of the impossibility of not completing what God began at so tremendous a cost to himself.

What God has done is put into Biblical words. “He that spared not his own Son” recalls Gen. 22:16, recalls not only the words but the fact, and there is a double correspondence. What God acknowledges as the highest proof of love in Abraham he himself has furnished us: he actually spared not his own Son. What do some interpreters mean by saying that Paul never called Jesus God’s Son? He begins his epistle by calling him this (1:2) and here even emphasizes it by writing “his own Son.” “Picture well to yourself this dear own Son,” writes Luther, “then you will feel intimately this flow of divine love. If you had a son who was not only your own bodily son but also your only son, an intelligent, wise, sensible, pius, good, and very dear son; and for the sake of a miserable strange servant who in addition was your debtor you now spared not this son but you sent and let him go and endure even death just in order to redeem that servant. Would you allow the ingratitude of such a servant, supposing that he would fail to appreciate and would despise the great love you and your son had borne him in counting him worth so much, would you allow it to go unpunished and with patient silence say nothing about it? How much less should you expect such a thing of God and God’s Son?” See how Jesus describes this sparing not his own Son in Matt. 21:37. “Spared not” shows what the price meant to God.

The negative is enhanced by the positive: “but delivered him up,” namely into death. Ὃςπαρέδωκεναὐτόν is matched by Χριστὸςπαρέδωκενἑαυτόν, Gal. 2:20; Eph. 5:2; 1 Tim. 2:6; Titus 2:14. This significant verb is constantly used in the Gospels to designate Christ’s deliverance into the hands of his enemies and into death. “His own Son” names the person according to his divine nature while what is predicated of him pertains to his human nature. A survey of the Scriptures nets the result that the person may be named by any name, and anything of either or of both natures may be freely predicated of him. This is due to the union of the two natures in his person.

“For us all” takes in every believer, not one is excepted. Yet the phrase in no way limits the atonement: the Son died for all men alike. When it is said in various connections that he died for the believers, this is due to the fact that so many men reject the atonement, that only in the believers does it become personally, savingly effective, that they thus stand out as a group by themselves. Here Paul deals with these alone in order to comfort and to assure them, something he could not do for others, hence he says ὑπὲρἡμῶνπάντων. This is placed emphatically before παρέδωκεν. Substitution is included because only by being delivered up “in our stead” could the Son have been delivered up “in our behalf.” Remove substitution, and nothing of saving value “in our behalf” is left. See the discussion under 5:6, 8.

Construe “how not also” and not “also with him.” It is true that the meek shall inherit “the earth” (Matt. 5:5), that Abraham is “heir of the world” (Rom. 4:13), and we heirs with him (Gal. 3:29). If the context permitted it, we, too, should regard τὰπάντα as distinct from πάντα, in the sense of das All, “the all,” “the sum of all things” (R. 773), the glorified earth and universe (Rev. 21:1). But such a reference lies too far back, namely in v. 18–25, the coming glory in which the creature will share. The paragraph v. 26–30 deals with our comfort in this life, and the present paragraph is still comfort for this life. Hence τὰπάντα must mean “all the things,” the sum total of what we now need. Nothing: of this shall be lacking; all of it shall be graciously granted us by God.

He will not stint us. Thus the article is in place in contradistinction to v. 28 where it is properly absent.

Romans 8:33

33 Verse 32 rests on God’s being for us; v. 33, 34 on someone being against us. If anyone were against us in God’s courtroom, this opposition might be most fatal for us. Paul begins with that possibility. Who shall bring accusation against God’s elect? God is he who declares righteous! Who is he that will condemn? Christ Jesus is he who died, yea rather who was raised from the dead, he who is at the right of God, he who even intercedes for us!

As indicated by the R. V. margin, others, too, translate as though Paul had written four questions: 1) Who shall bring accusation against God’s elect? 2) Shall God who justifies? 3) Who is he that will condemn? 4) Shall it be Christ Jesus who died, etc.? Abstractly considered, this might be done, but not concretely. Consider the second of these four questions—before what judge would God bring accusation? And would God as a judge also be the accuser? In order to avoid this incongruity the second and the third questions are combined: “God (since he is) the one justifying, who is the one condemning?” reading κατακρίνων, the present instead of the future participle.

This is thought to match Isa. 50:8, 9, where each of the questions has a preamble. But how would Θεὸςὁδικαιῶν be construed? It would be a strange pendent nominative, Moreover, no argument is needed to show that Θεὸςκτλ., and Χριστόςκτλ., are parallel, each follows a question and answers that question.

The κατά phrase intends to recall this phrase which was used in v. 31: anyone against us would try to bring charges against us. Ἐγκαλέσει is forensic and indicates the bringing of charges before a court and a judge. There is no reason for restricting the future tense to the time of the judgment at the last day. The devil, our accuser, the law, our conscience, the world do not wait until that time. The answer to the question is not that no one will ever accuse us, for we shall be accused often and shall even accuse ourselves (1 John 3:21); just as in v. 31 the answer is not that no one is ever against us. No one will ever be success, fully against us, will ever successfully accuse us. In order to amount to anything the accusation would have to be lodged with God, the Supreme Judge.

How vain an accusation will be is indicated already by the phrase “against God’s elect” which is substituted for “against us,” which was used in v. 31. “God’s elect” is objective like “in behalf of saints,” “those loving God,” “the called according to purpose,” “whom—these (οὕς—τούτους),” and “many brethren” (v. 27–30), all referring to the same persons. The thought is not that of partiality, that God would not listen to an accusation against people whom he elected for himself in an absolute way, but the very reverse, that as a righteous God and as declaring those righteous who are of faith in Jesus (3:26) he would never have made these his “elect” if valid charges could ever be lodged against them. They are “elect according to God, the Father’s, foreknowledge,” 1 Pet. 1:1, 2.

The answer to all accusations is: “God is he who acquits!” In regard to ὁδικαιῶν see the passive δικαιούμενοι in 3:24 and the active δικαιοῦντα in 3:26. In “he that justifies” there lies the entire doctrine of justification as presented in 3:21, etc. The elect are constantly justified. God does not ignore the sins they still commit, he pardons them for the sake of Christ whom the elect embrace by faith: “he daily and richly forgives all sins to me and all believers,” Luther.

In this epistle Paul uses the term “elect” only once and then only with the genitive “God’s” and no further modifier. It is plain that by saying that God justifies them Paul reverts to v. 29, 30: those whom God foreknew and foreordained he also justified. This justification clears them of every charge which anyone may bring against them. As “the called according to purpose” (v. 28) they were foreknown as such, as those in whom God’s saving purpose of grace would be effective; thus God elected them as his own, foreknew them in effective love, and certainly now justifies them.

Romans 8:34

34 “Who is he who will condemn?” advances the thought of the previous question: “Who will bring accusation?” To condemn is more than to accuse. The thought expressed is the fact that, if God will not condemn, others will, namely these accusers and others who hear the accusation. Here we must remember that all God’s judgments, both acquittals and condemnations, are by God himself subjected to the whole universe of angels and of men for judgment as to whether they are righteous in every way. For this reason Paul says in 3:26: “so as to be righteous and (this) as declaring righteous him who is of faith in Jesus.” God’s righteousness and justice must be and will be vindicated before the universe so that no one will acquit where he condemns or condemn where he acquits. Thus this second question is in place. Many now condemn the elect and condemn God along with them; but as God’s acquittal silences their accusations, so Christ’s mediation silences their condemnations. Paul penetrates a little farther than we commonly do.

It is true, Paul writes ὁκατακρινῶν, a substantivized participle, because he has just written ὁδικαιῶν. But this does not imply that we must connect these two: “God is he that justifies, who is he that condemns?” Even the fact that “justifies” and “condemns” are opposites does not call for this combination. The decisive parallel lies in the two questions introduced with τίς and in their two answers. “Who will accuse?” is matched by the climacteric: “Who is he who will condemn?” And the participle is future, κατακρινῶν, matching “shall condemn,” and not present, κατακρίνων.

Now notice how pertinent the answer is. It could not and should not be, that God acquits, as though nobody will then dare to condemn. Almighty judicial authority does not thus squelch condemnation. It does not stand on power and might where the question is one of right and wrong, of just or unjust judgment. No person can condemn, every person must assent to God’s acquittal for the overwhelming reason that Christ Jesus has taken our part: he died, arose, sits at God’s right hand, even intercedes for us. What Christ has done not only answers all condemnation, it makes every condemnation on the part of any person impossible. Before him who died in obedience even to the death on the cross every knee will bow and every tongue confess that he is, indeed, the Savior-Lord, Phil. 2:10, 11.

As so often, “Christ Jesus,” names him first in view of his office and secondly in view of his person. This is the “own Son” whom God did not spare but delivered up for us all: “he who died” the expiating and atoning death: 3:25, “his blood”; 5:6, “died for the ungodly”; 5:8–11,“died for us—we were reconciled through the death of his Son”; 6:4–8,“we died with Christ, were crucified, were entombed with him.” Here is sufficiency indeed!

Paul corrects himself after a manner: “yea (δέ) rather who was raised for us,” etc. There is no article before the second participle because it is intended to accompany the first participle and only develops the thought of the first more fully. So “yea rather” does not mean that his having died was not enough; his having been raised up from the dead reveals only the efficacy, the all-sufficiency of his death by showing his blood to be that of God’s Son which cleanses from sin (1 John 1:7), the resurrection attesting its reception by God as being all-sufficient.

Now there follow two emphatic relative clauses, the ὅς of each = “he who.” “He who is at the right hand of God.” For this purpose he was raised from the dead, for this purpose his human nature was exalted into the fullest participation in his divine majesty and power. This glorious position of the crucified and the risen Christ does not intend to make him a shield for the elect of God against any condemnation but is to reveal the full deity of him who died for them. So sufficient was his sacrificial death as to make impossible any voice of condemnation against them.

And now to cap all: “he who even intercedes for us,” ἐντυγχάνειὑπέρ as in v. 27. To the Spirit’s intercession is added that of Jesus at God’s right hand; ἐνδεξιᾷ is always a fixed phrase without an article and is feminine because χειρί is to be supplied. This is the intercessio specialis for believers (John 17:11, 17) as distinguished from the intercessio generalis for all the living. 1 John 2:1: “If any man sin, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the Righteous: and he is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world.” His intercession for us secures time and place for us daily to repent of our sins and to find daily remission of sins. Καί is ascensive: “even” this he does for us after all else that he has done. His intercession cannot fail since it is backed by his expiation. Where, then, is there a voice to condemn us?

Romans 8:35

35 Another set of dangers assails us, not with judicial assaults, but with direct assaults in order to separate us from God’s saving love. Our salvation is safe also against all that these may do.

What shall separate us from the love of Christ? Tribulation? or anguish? or persecution? or hunger? or nakedness? or peril? or sword? Even as it has been written:

For thy sake are we killed all the day long;

We were reckoned as slaughter-sheep.

But in all these things we more than conquer through him who did love us.

The love which Christ has for us (subjective genitive) is referred to and not our love for him (which would make the genitive objective). We are separated from something outside of us with which we have been connected and not from something that is a part of us. The question is: “Will anything ever make Christ cease to love us?” This is not a theoretical question. It is actually pressed out of the hearts of those who are compelled to taste the bitter evils here mentioned. Nor is Paul writing sympathetically for others—these are experiences taken from his own biography. “Or sword?” Bengel says points to the method of Paul’s own death as a martyr. Τίς is proper in the Greek, for the nouns that follow are not neuters but feminines and masculines. Since all of them are neuters in English, we translate “what” (not “who”).

The world likes to point to our afflictions as proof of the fact that Christ has ceased to love us, or that his love is imaginary. The Jews mocked Jesus under the cross: “He trusted in God, let him deliver him now, if he will have him; for he said, I am the Son of God.” So men say to us, so our own hearts say to us when the waves threaten to overwhelm our little bark as they did the boat of the disciples on the Sea of Galilee while Jesus slept. He seems to have forgotten us, to have ceased caring for us. The afflictions appear like a gulf that separates us from him, a gulf which he has allowed to remove us far from him.

The point of the thought is lost when the question of our faith is introduced: “Can anything sunder the tie of faith that connects us with the love of Christ?” and when the answer is given: “No, the elect cannot lose their faith.” But Christ loves even those who lose their faith, his love reaches out to save them. Remember how his love sought to the last to save Judas! Besides, the painful things here mentioned are not at all the worst as far as losing our faith is concerned. Many lose their faith through cunning lies and deceit that are handed out to them as the real truth.

There is a natural order in the seven specifications: θλῖψις, a feeling of pressure; στενοχωρία, narrowness of room (these first two often constitute a pair as in 2:9; 2 Cor. 6:4, compare Trench, Synonyms); διωγμός, pursuit or persecution by enemies; hence λιμός, hunger, and γυμνότης, lack of clothing when one has to flee; finally μάχαιρα, a short sword used by the Roman heavily armed soldier, and thus it means that the pursued martyr is caught with all that this may entail. When these things come upon one for Christ’s sake they certainly do not look like the tender caresses of love; they look as though no Christ existed or as though he had abandoned us, as though these were blows of wrath. For this reason the question is so extended and detailed. Paul is the last man to fear mentioning these things.

Romans 8:36

36 Instead of referring to himself as one who had experienced all of these evils, Paul reminds his readers of Ps. 44:22. Read the entire psalm in order to get the force of the verse quoted. We have the usual formula of quotation with the perfect tense: “has been written” and thus stands so now. This is not prophecy but parallel history, the similar experience of God’s people in days gone by. The LXX and the Hebrew agree. The emphasis is on the first phrase: “for thy sake.” The entire psalm pictures Israel, not as being punished for its sins, but as being faithful and yet being tried by victorious enemies.

This is the important point, that we are afflicted for Christ’s sake just because we are God’s true children. This is not a sign that Christ is withdrawing his love, it is a sign of the very opposite: we are, indeed, to suffer for his sake.

Paul selects these two lines from the psalm because they state the extreme of such suffering for God’s sake. The fact that the “thy” in the psalm refers to God while Paul speaks of Christ certainly makes no difference. The accusative “the whole day long” expresses extent of time. The enemies kept up nothing less than their killing God’s people; they actually regarded them as being nothing but “slaughter-sheep,” which we may translate with an objective genitive: “sheep for slaughter” (R. 501) or with a qualitative genitive. The psalmist no longer sees his people as a flock that is led to pasture but as one that is sold to be butchered. This picture is extreme, purposely so, in order to include all lesser injuries as well. We constantly find this usage in the Scriptures as when murder is forbidden which includes hatred, malice, etc.

Romans 8:37

37 “But in all things we are more than conquerors through him who did love us.” Ἀλλά is the simple adversative; it does not break off in order to start anew as our versions indicate by translating it “nay.” Ἀλλά is sometimes so used but not here. Ὑπερνικῶμεν is used intransitively in the sense: “we keep achieving the most brilliant victory,” namely, not only by enduring these evils, but by enduring them joyfully. “Let us also rejoice in the tribulations” (5:3); the apostles “rejoiced that they were accounted worthy to suffer dishonor for the Name” (Acts 5:41).

These tribulations do not separate us from Christ’s love, they do the opposite: we conquer them “through him who did love us.” This substantivized aorist participle refers to Christ’s supreme act of love when he died for us. The participle is not constative, for the present tense would then be preferable: “him who loves us.” And it is indeed that supreme act of Christ’s love (5:6) which constitutes the ultimate means by which we conquer and more than conquer all that comes upon us for his sake. That act of love, his death for us, stands; nothing can remove it or lessen it. With it we settle every doubt that affliction would arouse. “He loved us!”—that holds good.

Romans 8:38

38 In his climax Paul rises to personal confession and testimony. Yet despite its exaltation his testimony is voiced so as to induce his Christian readers to join him in the blessed assurance and to say with him: “We, too, are persuaded even as thou art!” Paul’s “I” does not obtrude itself, it links arms with his fellow believers. The very soul of Paul reveals itself. A hypocrite may imitate the language, he can do no more.

For I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creation will be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus, our Lord.

Πέπεισμαι is perfect in form and present in force and also has the passive idea that the persuasion or conviction was wrought in Paul by God and so remains in him. The list given in v. 35 is now overtopped by one that begins where the other left off, namely with “death” (implied in “sword”), and adds all the mightiest things one can name, and concludes with the all-comprehensive “nor any other creation,” if one could name still another that is comparable to these. None of them can stop God’s love from reaching and holding us, so great is this love. With γάρ Paul adds this conviction of his by explaining why he so confidently says that we more than conquer in all these things. It is not the strength of his own personal conviction that makes what he says so certain, for many have been strongly convinced of what was never true. It is the reality itself which, because it is so certain, has convinced Paul of its certainty and thus makes him speak with such certainty.

We should note that Paul’s conviction is not restricted to himself but extends to his readers: nothing “shall separate us,” etc. In both lists no item such as our own unbelief, obduracy, or apostasy appears. Paul is not teaching irresistibility to or amissibility of grace and an absolute predestination. As Judas separated himself from God’s love in Christ, so will others. But Paul is not dealing with this possibility, since he depicts the love that makes us conquerors. He is speaking to those who need this comfort for their valiant conquering and not to possible apostates.

When the question of apostasy is introduced, it is not solved by saying that the elect will infallibly be saved. Why did Paul himself then not say so? He had the wisdom not to say so, for this would lead each one of us to the speculation as to whether he is one of the elect or not, and would dispose him to false security or to despair. As to who will and who will not persevere and all similar questions, the answer is: “We should not reason in our thoughts, draw conclusions, nor inquire curiously into these matters, but should adhere to his revealed Word, to which he points us,” C. Tr. 1081, 54. And again (1085, 66): “Thus the entire Holy Trinity, God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, directs all men to Christ, as to the Book of Life, in whom they should seek the eternal election of the Father. For this has been decided by the Father from eternity, that whom he would save he would save through Christ.”

The Christian is fully assured that no condition of his existence, whether death or life; no beings, whether they be angels or principalities among men; nothing in time, whether in the present or in the future; nothing in the way of powers or forces; nothing in space, whether in the heights or in the depths; in fact, nothing in all creation, no matter what it may be called, not only shall not, but even cannot separate him and his fellow Christians from God’s saving love by placing a barrier between them and that love so that it cannot reach them.

We have four pairs and two single items in this list. It seems best to regard “powers” as a single item and to place it where the R. V. has it and not where the A. V. has it. The reading: “angels, principalities, powers” seems to be due to the idea that all three refer to supernatural beings; but what three classes of such beings could be named? No; ἀρχαί are earthly rulers. The idea that “angels” = serving spirits has little to commend it. “Powers” is broad, and the word has been taken as a reference to the powers of nature as manifested in storms, thunder and lightning, and earthquakes; and “height” and “depth” have likewise been referred to the lightning from on high and to the eruptions of lava from volcanoes. We thus hesitate to specify.

Romans 8:39

39 “Any other creation” (v. 20), the abstract term for the concrete, differentiates this item from the Creator himself. In v. 35 some texts read “from the love of God.” This is probably done to harmonize it with v. 39. But Christ’s love is mentioned in v. 37, and the love of Christ and that of God is the same. But note the second article in “the love of God, the (love) in Christ Jesus, our Lord”; it makes the phrase a kind of apposition and climax with emphasis (R. 776), hence also the full name and title of Jesus are used, and ἐν means, “in connection with.”

The results of justification are thus fully presented (chapters 5 to 8). No one has ever set them forth so compactly and so profoundly, in a way that is so stimulating, effective, and uplifting. And all this in a letter to a single congregation! These are, indeed, chapters in which every Christian should immerse his soul.

R. A Grammar of the Greek New Testament in the Light of Historical Research, by A. T. Robertson, fourth edition.

B.-D. Friedrich Blass’ Grammatik des neutestamentlichen Griechisch, vierte, voellig neu-gearbeitete Aufiage besorgt von Albert Debrunner.

C.-K. Biblisch-theologisches Woerterbuch der Neutestamentlichen Graezitaet von D. Dr. Hermann Cremer, zehnte, etc., Auflage, herausgegeben von D. Dr. Julius Koegel.

B.-P. Griechisch-Deutsches Woerterbuch zu den Schriften des Neuen Testaments, etc., von D. Walter Bauer, zweite, etc., Auflage zu Erwin Preuschens Vollstaendigem Griechisch-Deutschen Handwoerterbuch, etc.

M.-M. The Vocabulary of the Greek Testament, Illustrated from the Papyri and other Non-Literary Sources, by James Hope Moulton and George Milligan.