ROMANS UNWRAPPED 150

THE PERMANENCE OF THE NEW LIFE IN CHRIST JESUS         Romans 8v31-39

Paul now reaches the climax of his teaching of the glorious gospel.  Having outlined the PLAN OF THE AGES spanning from before time began, and reaching to after time will end, he has presented the five steps to glory.   Conceived and secured in eternity, accomplished and established in time, with results going on to the endless ages of eternity, it is no wonder that Paul is ecstatic and triumphant in his mood in verses 31-39.   He opens the section by saying  "what shall we say then to these things/"   This jaw dropping truth that he has presented should cause all of us to have the same reaction; what can anyone say about such a programme?, that takes condemned sinners from a bitter end, turns them into saints and makes their future glorious .   His theme is one of triumph and victory.   He uses superlative language .   He doesn't want us to miss the wonder of all of this and so he asks four unanswerable questions and thus gathers any loose ends that may yet remain in our minds.  

• If God be for us who shall be against us?
• Who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect?
• Who is he that will condemn us?
• Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?

The answer in each and every case is an emphatic no-one and nothing.   No-one and nothing in all of heaven, or the earth or hell will sever God from His people, or successfully come between them.   Paul is asking here is there anyone or anything in all existence that can defeat God's eternal purpose? 

This is the ultimate victory, this is the final song of triumph, this is the death knell to sin and Satan and even death itself.   This does not mean the absence of enemies or problems or hurdles which need to be overcome; it simply means that God's purpose will be fulfilled no matter what, that God's people will overcome all odds against them.   He quotes from Psalm 44 which basically views God's people from the world's point of view, as losers, downtrodden, of no consequence , wimpish , back numbers.   For those who think the Christian life will mean the absence of problems the reference he makes from Psalm 44   "for Thy sake we are killed all the day long, we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter" tells us that the very opposite is the case. Christians will lose out in this life, but their eyes are not on this world or on this life but firmly fixed on the next.   Rather than being losers, says Paul they are winners because God in them is establishing a life of glory that will go on for all eternity, instead of building their lives on a few years in a world that will come to nothing.   So Paul introduces his triumphant cry "Nay in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him that loved us."   God's people are no back numbers, they are the highest thinkers in all of earth, their vision is beyond this life, their horizon is greater than this poor world.   God's people are a conquering people, are a glorious people and no event in time or eternity on earth or beyond the earth can alter the glorious pathway on which they have begun.

Did Abraham lose who left his own country to become a nomad at the call of God in a strange land?

Did Jacob?; did Joseph?; did David? ; did Jesus who succumbed to the brutality and hatred of men, but now sits at the right of God? did the twelve apostles most of whom were martyred lose out?  did Paul? will any of us? and the answer is an emphatic NO.   It is always God's way; suffering in this life and glory in the next.   In the teaching of Jesus we save our lives by giving them up; we lead by becoming servants to others, we conquer by being conquered.   The greatest example of this is Christ Himself  

1. His be the Victor's Name
Who fought the fight alone;
Triumphant saints no honor claim;
Their conquest was His own.

2. By weakness and defeat
He won the glorious crown;
Trod all His foes beneath His feet
By being trodden down.

What though the vile accuser roar
Of sins that I have done;
I know them well, and thousands more;
My God, He knoweth none

3. He hell in hell laid low;
Made sin, He sin o'erthrew;
Bowed to the grave, destroyed it so,
And death, by dying, slew.

4. Bless, bless the Conqueror slain,
Slain by divine decree!
Who lived, who died, who lives again,
For thee, my soul, for thee.

Christianity is all about the conquering Christ and His conquering people, underpinned by the eternal purposes of the living God.