Throughout the centuries, most people who have been exposed to some type of biblical influence want to think that God is for them. Or we might put it this way: they think that God is on their side. We see this back in Joshua 5:13-15. Just before the initial battle in the Promised Land, the Battle of Jericho, Joshua was doing a little reconnaissance when he saw a man with a drawn sword. It seems obvious that he understood this was no ordinary man walking around with a sword! “Are you for us or for our adversaries?” he asked. Expecting him to choose sides, Israel’s leader probably was taken aback by the answer, “No; rather I indeed come now as captain of the host of the Lord.” This was both unsettling and comforting. Joshua had to be unsettled when he realized that he was not in charge of the battle or its outcome; everything was out of his hands (but that is an apt picture of Lordship). But surely he knew comfort when he understood that the Lord had taken up his conflict to assure that the outcome would glorify God and not man. Indeed, that’s what happened when the walls of Jericho fell down after Joshua and his men marched around the city seven times. God alone received the glory.
Is God on your side? Kaiser Wilhelm thought so when he initiated military movements that sparked the First World War. Interestingly, so did Hitler who, though clearly demonized, thought God was on Germany’s side. We hear the same language used by political parties in our country with grand claims that they are doing the will of God, and so quite obviously, He must be on their side. While political parties claim divine partnership, so do terrorist groups like Al Qaeda, Taliban, the Lord’s Army, and dozens of other groups.
But how about when the mission has nothing to do with war but with some type of moral issue? There’s clearly a claim that God is on “our side.” But an organizational charter or poster board claiming God’s favor cannot put the living God into their corner. We do not control Him or harness Him as though He exists to further our interests even if those interests are honorable and beneficial to society.
None of us can claim, “God is for us,” since we do not know the mind of God unless He makes such a declaration. In similar words, the Lord appeared to a fearful Isaac and declared, “I am the God of your father Abraham; do not fear, for I am with you” (Gen. 26:24). When Elisha’s servant looked out early one morning in Dothan and saw the Syrian army poised to attack, Elisha asked the Lord to open his eyes. He saw the host of the Lord with chariots of fire ready to come to their aid. “Do not fear, for those who are with us are more than those who are with them” (2 Kings 6:15-19). As Jeremiah received God’s call, he trembled at the thought of taking God’s Word to a stubborn people. But the Lord assured him, “They will fight against you, but they will not overcome you, for I am with you to deliver you” (Jer. 1:19). Each story illustrates what it means for God to be on for us; and each shows us that we do not set God’s agenda to fit into our little plans. He comes to us with the assurance that He is for us.
It changes the way we view the circumstances of life when we know that God is for us. Can you look at opposition in the same way? Can you cower and fret over the threats of men if you know that God is for you?
“Very well,” you may say, “I agree that such knowledge curbs the doubts and gnawing fears that we face in life. But how do we know that God is for us? Is our claim no different than Kaiser Wilhelm or a political party?”
Here’s where our text gives us a clear answer. The cross of Christ assures believers of the constancy of God’s love and care: that He is for them. We know that He is for us because we look to the cross.
Is there anything that can ultimately rob us of the fruit of Christ’s redemptive work if God is for us? That’s the question we must consider. Here Paul deals with assurance. Can faith in Christ be conquered? Or we might ask another way, in light of the trials and failures of life, how far does assurance of salvation go? Can a person or power or circumstance sever the believer from God? I believe we find answers to each of these questions in these two verses.
Is our salvation ultimately due to our faithfulness or to God’s? I do not want to diminish the believer’s perseverance and endurance as a Christian. Over and over we are called upon to endure, to be steadfast, to bear up, and to persevere. Yet this kind of endurance is never the basis for our salvation. It is evidence of regenerate life. The basis for our salvation rests in our faithful God.
Consider how Paul develops his argument. He begins with a question that is intended to draw together what he’s been explaining. “What then shall we say to these things?” Does he mean the great chain of salvation in 8:28-30? Yes, he includes this but that surely is not all. Does he mean the explanation of how in union with Jesus Christ we are no longer under condemnation, and we have been given the Holy Spirit who affirms our salvation in a variety of ways? Yes, that too, but more. Paul uses this question to drop back to the entire argument he has set forth in Romans: the explanation of the gospel as God’s power for salvation to all that believe; the gospel as the righteousness of God; the need for the gospel due to universal depravity; the effective work of Jesus Christ in propitiating God with reference to our sins and thus justifying us through His bloody death; the certainty that, like Abraham, we believe the gospel of Christ and God counts us righteous; the effects of union with Christ in His death and resurrection. Then he layers various aspects of assurance that belongs to every believer and the certainty that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love Him. Assurance is on solid foundation because we did not initiate our salvation. It began in God and was wrought by His grace through foreknowledge, predestination, calling, justification, and glorification. “What then shall we say to these things?”
How do you view these things? What do you make of them in light of the struggle with assurance of salvation? Well, it is obvious. You apply these truths! You do not just look at “these things” as nice biblical doctrines for theological banter but it ends there. No, these are truths for life…truths that must be applied regularly in the Christian life.
How does Paul summarize these truths in Romans 1-8? He does it in four words: “God is for us.” As Doug Moo explains: “God being ‘for us’ means that the verdict he has already rendered in justification stands as a perfect guarantee of vindication in the judgment” [NICNT: Romans, 538]. That does not mean that God has acquiesced to our plans or He has gotten in our corner or that He is now engaged in making sure that we get our way in everything! The gospel means that God is for us.
What is the opposite of this statement? God is against us. There’s no middle ground with Him. He is either for us or against us. There are no more fearful words than, “Thus says the Lord, “I am against you”.” He declared that to the Assyrians and Babylonians, to Tyre and Sidon, to Egypt when He delivered Israel from bondage and later during Ezekiel’s prophetic ministry (Nah. 2:13; 3:5; Jer. 50:31; 51:25; Eze. 26:3; 28:22; 29:3, 10; 30:22; noted by John Stott, Romans: God’s Good News for the World, 254]. But God demonstrates that He is for us by putting into motion the chain of salvation noted in 8:29-30.
When God is for you, you can be assured that others will be against you. Jesus explained it like this. “If the world hates you, you know that it has hated Me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, because of this the world hates you. Remember the word that I said to you, ‘A slave is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted Me, they will also persecute you; if they kept My word, they will keep yours also. But all these things they will do to you for My name’s sake, because they do not know the One who sent Me” (John 15:18-21).
‘Oh, no! We’re sunk! The world hates us!’ Do not despair. God is faithful. “If God is for us, who is against us?” That does not mean you will not face opposition or persecution but rather it means, “No problem!” Someone much greater is for you. Even in the face of the world’s fiercest opposition, God is for you, and so He “works all things together for good” on your behalf. He is faithful to His gospel promise. Count on Him.
Perhaps we need some reinforcement in counting on God’s faithfulness. We have it in the next verse. Paul begins with looking, not at the sacrifice of Christ, which he has already done, but at God’s part in that sacrifice. Why is this important? Some people have the idea that God the Father had to be persuaded by His Son to justify us. It’s the “good cop/bad cop” picture. It goes like this: Jesus is our friend and is out to help us but must persuade the Father, who sternly opposes us. His death on the cross demonstrates how much Jesus loves us in order to convince the Father to love us too.
If you ever hear that kind of argument, understand that it is patently false! It fails to grasp the unity in the Godhead or the eternal plan of God in our salvation. Notice Paul’s emphasis on God the Father in orchestrating our salvation through Christ the Son. “He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him over for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things?” Unfortunately, neither the NASB nor the ESV brought out a Greek particle that intensifies the statement. It can be translated as “even” and is commonly used to magnify the action of the verb. We might translate it, “He who did not spare even His own Son, but on our behalf delivered Him over for us, how also with Him will He not freely give us all things.”
Paul probably has in mind another situation where a father did not spare his own son. God told Abraham to offer his son Isaac as a burnt offering. They made the long journey to the mountain of God where Isaac carried the wood and Abraham the knife and fire. He bound his son on the altar and raised the knife to strike the fatal blow when the angel of the Lord called for him to stop. “Do not stretch out your hand against the lad, and do nothing to him; for now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld [or you have not spared] your son, your only son, from Me” (Gen. 22:12). Do you see the similarities? Yes, to a point the stories run parallel; but only to a point. Abraham did not spare his son but God intervened so that Isaac lived. Like Abraham, God “did not spare His own Son” but this time, He did not stop the fatal blow from falling upon His only Son.
The language precisely points to the uniqueness of Jesus Christ as God’s only Son. We are sons of God through adoption but He alone is the eternal Son who had never known anything but the infinite love of the Father. The Greek middle voice of the verb adds intensity to this divine act of not sparing His own Son on behalf of sinners.
Do you think on this level of sacrifice for you? I know it is difficult to get our minds around but we must think upon God’s sacrifice of His Son for us. Consider the context. Paul is dealing with assurance of salvation. Why do we normally doubt our salvation? Typically, it has to do either with our poor performance in the Christian life—behavior—(e.g. disobedience, bad habits, falling into sin) or our lack of understanding the sufficiency of Christ’s sacrifice—belief. The gospel—and our salvation—means, “God is for us,” God has accepted Christ’s death in our place, satisfied eternal justice through Him, and declared us righteous. Since that is the case, then what are we to do when we struggle with doubts? We are to go back to the Source. God did not spare His own Son when you desperately needed Him to stand in your place before God’s wrath. So, would He abandon you in midstream of life? If the price of your salvation demanded that only the Son could stand in your place before the wrath of the Father, then can your poor performance demolish what the Son has accomplished? Did you have enough good works before you were saved to save you? Will you have enough good deeds to discount, assist, or annul the sacrifice of Christ for you? Certainly not!
Who gave the Son? God did. He alone “did not spare His own Son” so that He might display Him publicly “as a propitiation in His blood through faith…to demonstrate…His righteousness at the present time, so that he would be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus” (Rom. 3:25-26). Are you going through a time of adversity that causes you to wonder if God has abandoned you? Then think upon God’s sacrifice of His Son for you, and no longer question His love and faithfulness.
The next phrase presses the sovereign, gracious work of God in redemption even further. Not only did God not spare His own Son “but delivered Him over for us all.” The verb shows that this was no accident or Plan B on the part of God. He intentionally delivered over His Son for us.
‘But wait a minute. I thought that Judas delivered Jesus to the priests, who delivered Him over to Pilate, who then delivered Him over to the executioners at the cross.’
They had their part in the plan of God but they would not have had any part unless God had put it into motion. Peter captured both man’s part in crucifying Christ and God’s underlying act to give up His Son to die for us. “This Man, delivered over by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God, you nailed to a cross by the hands of godless men and put Him to death” (Acts 2:23). The early disciples understood this as well. “For truly in this city there were gathered together against Your holy servant Jesus, whom You anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the people of Israel, to do whatever Your hand and Your purpose predestined to occur” (Acts 4:27-28). “Who delivered up Jesus to die?” asked Octavius Winslow in the 19th century. “Not Judas, for money; not Pilate, for fear; not the Jews, for envy;--but the Father for love!” Then he adds, “In this great transaction we lose sight of his betrayers, and his accusers, and his murderers, and we see only the Father travailing in the greatness of his love to his family” [No Condemnation, 361].
What was Jesus delivered over to? We know that He was delivered over to the Jews, to Pilate, and to the Roman executioners. Yet their part, horrible in every way, was not ultimate. God delivered over His Son to God; and not to the love of God or the mercy of God but to God in all of His wrath and judgment. He delivered the Son over to the just penalty of His law so that He might bear the curse borne by transgressors whom He would redeem. “To spare his people, he spared not his Son” [Winslow, 360].
The Father delivered over the Son so that He would become sin for us, who knew no sin, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him (2 Cor. 5:21). The Father delivered over the Son as one accursed and separated from God, for “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the Law, having become a curse for us—for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree”” (Gal. 3:13).
Though forever in the bosom of the Father, knowing nothing but the pure, infinite love between Father and Son for all eternity, the cross interrupted all of that. Instead of love, the Son knew the Father’s hatred, wrath, and judgment. We hear it at the cross when He cried out, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” Such weight none other has ever borne! Such agony none other has ever felt! The beloved and only Son forsaken, separated from the Father, the object of His own Father’s wrath!
Can we doubt His love and faithfulness in light of delivering over His Son? Dare we fret over the temporal issues we face that are against us when God resoundingly demonstrates that He is for us?
Who were the objects of this action of God in delivering over His Son? He “delivered Him over for us all.” This can only be interpreted in one of two ways. “For us all” is either (1) a universal declaration in which case, salvation has been already secured for every person who has ever lived. For God to punish anyone for whom His Son has already borne eternal judgment would be the greatest inequity in the universe. It also means that all, due to the sacrifice of Christ, will ultimately be saved. Some teach universalism and would use verses such as this to make their case.
(2) However, the other interpretation identifies a particular people for whom God gave over His Son. How has the Apostle used the personal pronouns throughout this section? When he refers to “we,” “our,” and “us” (e.g. 8:15, 16, 17, 18, 23, 24, etc.) in the context, he clearly speaks to fellow believers, particularly as he includes himself. He’s not offering an evangelistic message to fellow sinners but writing to the saints, those who are “the called of Jesus Christ…beloved of God in Rome, called as saints” (1:6-7). What about the use of the adverb “all”? It further expresses the particular way that each of us, regardless of our limitations, failures, or sin, is equally redeemed by the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. In other words, someone might say, “But Paul, you don’t know how bad my sin is…you don’t understand the pressures I’m under…you don’t know how often I fail!” This word of assurance intentionally covers all bases. “For us all” implies that no one for whom God sent His Son is left out of the redemptive work of God through Christ. Each can equally share in the assurance that belongs to all who are in Jesus Christ [see John Murray, NICNT: Romans, 325 for excellent discussion]. Consider God’s redemptive action in delivering over His Son for us.
Now Paul is ready to make his main point. Remember that he is responding to the question, “If God is for us, who is against us?” He answers this question with more of an exclamatory question. He calls upon us to think about it, to reason through the magnificence of God sending His Son for us. We know that God is for us when we see how He did not spare His Son but delivered Him over “for us”—i.e. on our behalf [Gk. huper]. But the struggle that we commonly have is whether or not God will come through in the particular circumstance we are encountering. Is God for us even when everything else is against us? Yes, I know that God has provided my salvation through Christ but how will I handle the trials of life? How do I know that God will give grace when I need it to persevere in the faith?
Paul answers by moving from the greater to the lesser. If He did not spare His Son but delivered Him over for us all, “How will He not also with Him freely give us all things?” If God does the greater, the costlier in delivering over His Son to face His own wrath, then we can be assured that He will supply the grace necessary in every situation and circumstance that we encounter. The lesser is grace for our temporal needs. If He has done the greater for us through Christ then rely upon Him to do the lesser as well.
“With Him” takes us back to our union with Jesus Christ—a theme hammered out in chapters 5-6 and repeated from another angle in chapter 8. If you are in union with Jesus Christ in His death and resurrection, then you need not fear that God will for some reason abandon you in the battles you face to persevere as a believer. You are in Christ! You are beloved of the Father! You have the spirit of adoption by which you cry out as sons, “Abba! Father!” (8:15). So you need not fret over devils, persecutors, diseases, adversities, or armies. God is for you because you are in Christ.
‘But do we have to earn this kind of favor from God? Surely, God expects payback time from us, so unless we deliver the goods then He will not give to us in time of need.’
Many have this kind of attitude, one that enters by grace but like the Galatians, treads upon tossing away grace for law. But notice the promise: “How will He not also with Him freely give us all things?” The verb translated as “freely give,” expresses the intention well. We might translate it as “graciously give,” as does the ESV, since the verb implies grace giving. In other words, God keeps working in grace in all those for whom He has delivered over His Son. God is for us so He keeps giving to us.
Does “all things” include cars, houses, toys, vacations, etc.? Instead of that kind of self-indulgence, Paul has in mind the “all things” necessary for us to continue persevering as Christians. This is not a “health & wealth” blank check to claim but rather God’s gracious provision for everything we need “for life and godliness” (2 Pet 1:3-4).
Will you rely on God’s gracious provisions for you as a believer? Ingratitude, complaining, griping, and fear can worm their way into our lives only if we forget or deny that, “God is for us.” So look at the faithfulness of God in sacrificially sending His Son to secure our redemption, and know that His provisions for everything pertaining to life and godliness are amply met in Christ. Dare we doubt His love and care when He did not spare His Son for us? Is God for you? If you can affirm this truth then I exhort you to live like it.
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