[Sidenote: Ver. 29.] =For whom He knew beforehand,= with a foreknowledge which, in this argument, can mean nothing short of foredecision[143]--no mere foreknowledge of what they would do, but rather of what He would do for them--=those He also set apart beforehand, for conformation,= deep and genuine, a resemblance due to kindred _being_,[144] =to the image,= the manifested Countenance, =of His Son, that He might be Firstborn amongst many brethren,= surrounded by the circling host of kindred faces, congenial beings, His Father's children by their union with Himself. So, as ever in the Scriptures, mystery bears full on character. The man is saved that he may be holy. His "_predestination_"[145] is not merely not to perish, but to be made like Christ, in a spiritual transformation, coming out in the moral features of the family of heaven. And all bears ultimately on the glory of Christ. The gathered saints are an organism, a family, before the Father; and their vital Centre is the Beloved Son, who sees in their true sonship the fruit of "the travail of His soul."
[Sidenote: Ver. 30.] =But those whom He thus set apart beforehand, He also called,= effectually drew so as truly and freely to choose Christ; =and those whom He= thus =called= to Christ, =He also justified= in Christ, in that great way of propitiation and faith of which the Epistle has so largely spoken; =but[146] those whom He= thus =justified, He also glorified.= "_Glorified_": it is a marvellous past tense. It reminds us that in this passage we are placed, as it were, upon the mountain of the Throne; our finite thought is allowed to speak for once (however little it understands it) the language of eternity, to utter the facts as the Eternal sees them. To Him, the pilgrim is already in the immortal Country; the bondservant is already at his day's end, receiving His Master's "Well done, good and faithful." He to whom time is not as it is to us thus sees His purposes complete, always and for ever. We see through His sight, in hearing His word about it. So for us, in wonderful paradox, our glorification is presented, as truly as our call, in terms of accomplished fact.
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Here, in a certain sense, the long golden chain of _the doctrine_ of the Epistle ends--in the hand of the King who thus crowns the sinners whose redemption, faith, acceptance, and holiness, He had, in the Heaven of His own Being, fore-willed and fore-ordered, "before the world began," above all time. What remains of the chapter is the application of the doctrine. But what an application! The Apostle brings his converts out into the open field of trial, and bids them _use_ his doctrine _there_. Are they thus dear to the Father in the Son? Is their every need thus met? Is their guilt cancelled in Christ's mighty merit? Is their existence filled with Christ's eternal Spirit? Is sin thus cast beneath their feet, and is such a heaven opened above their heads? "Then what have they to fear," before man, or before God? What power in the universe, of whatever order of being, can really hurt them? For what can separate them from their portion in their glorified Lord, and in His Father's love in Him? Again we listen, with Tertius, as the voice goes on:
[Sidenote: Ver. 31.] =What therefore shall we say in view of these things? If God is for us, who is against us?= [Sidenote: Ver. 32.] =HE[147] who did not spare His own true (ἰδίου) Son, but for us all handed Him over= to that awful expiatory, propitiatory, darkness and death, so that HE was "pleased to bruise Him, to put Him to grief" (Isai. liii. 10), all for His own great glory, but, no whit the less, all for our pure blessing; =how= (wonderful "_how_"!) =shall He not also with Him,= because _all_ is included and involved in Him who is the Father's All, =give us also freely all things= (τὰ πάντα, "_the all_ things that are")? And do we want to be sure that He will not, after all, find a flaw in our claim, and cast us in His court? [Sidenote: Ver. 33.] =Who will lodge a charge against God's chosen ones?= Will =God--who justifies them?[148] Who will condemn them,= if the charge _is_ lodged? Will =Christ--who died, nay rather who rose, who is on the right hand of God, who is actually (καὶ) interceding for us?= (Observe this one mention in the whole Epistle of His Ascension, and His action for us above, as He is, by the fact of His Session on the Throne, our sure Channel of eternal blessing, unworthy that we are.) Do we need assurance, amidst "the sufferings of this present time," that through them always the invincible hands of Christ clasp us, with untired love? We "look upon the covenant" of our acceptance and life in Him who died for us, and who lives both for and in us, and we meet the fiercest buffet of these waves in peace. [Sidenote: Ver. 35.] =Who shall sunder us from the love of Christ?= There rise before him, as he asks, like so many angry personalities,[149] the outward woes of the pilgrimage. =Tribulation? or Perplexity? or Persecution? or Famine? or Nakedness? or Peril? or Sword?= [Sidenote: Ver. 36.] =As it stands written,= in that deep song of anguish and faith (Psal. xliv.) in which the elder Church, one with us in deep continuity, tells her story of affliction, ="For Thy sake we are done to death all the day long; we have been reckoned,= estimated, =as sheep of slaughter."= Even so. [Sidenote: Ver. 37.] =But in these things, all of them, we more than conquer;= not only do we tread upon our foes; we spoil them, we find them occasions of glorious gain,[150] =through Him who loved us.= [Sidenote: Ver. 38.] =For I am sure that neither death, nor life,= life with its natural allurements or its bewildering toils, =nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers,[151]= whatever Orders of being unfriendly to Christ and His saints the vast Unseen contains, =nor present things, nor things to come,= in all the boundless field of circumstance and contingency, =nor height, nor depth,= in the illimitable sphere of space, =nor any other creature,= no thing, no being, under the Uncreated One, =shall be able to sunder us,= "_us_" with an emphasis upon the word and thought (ἡμας χωρίσαι), =from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord=--from the eternal embrace wherein the Father embosoms the Son, and, in the Son, all who are one with Him.